Lynn Eldred lives in Hebron, Kentucky, but often has doctor appointments in Cincinnati and even further north. She relies on a wheelchair and public transit to get around.
That has meant arranging rides with up to three different transit agencies and then waiting for each of them to pick her up. Transfers can be tricky, she says, and the whole thing is very time-consuming.
"I went up to Butler County one time, and I left at 6:30 in the morning, had an hour appointment, and got home at 7 that night," she says.
Now those agencies are teaming up. Starting Monday, Metro, the Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky, and the Butler County Regional Transit Authority will share small buses they'll dispatch to people needing rides across the region. A computer system will match riders with buses to create efficient routes.
The pilot program is called EZConnect. Metro Board Chair Blake Ethridge says it's the first of its kind in the nation and will eliminate the need to get rides from each individual transit agency as riders travel between their service areas. He pledged the program will provide "one call, one seat" service.
"[This] eliminates one of the biggest barriers in paratransit: fragmentation between service areas," he said at a ribbon-cutting launching the program Monday.
Riders must be eligible to use paratransit services under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The rides cost $8 each way. Riders during the pilot phase will complete surveys about their experience.
Metro has been working on the idea since 2021, officials say. The local transit agencies also collaborated with NEORide, a multi-state alliance of over 30 public transit agencies based in Northern Ohio. The group has been working on its own version of the program.
Metro says the pilot program will allow the transit agency to work out bugs in the system before a full launch in the near future.
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