Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and Federal
Transit Administration (FTA) Joint Webinar for Regions 5 & 7:
Identifying Transportation Solutions to Improve Access to
Economic Opportunities
April 30, 2019>> Welcome, everyone. It's the top of the hour, so we're going to go ahead and get
started. Thank you for joining us today for "Identifying Transportation Solutions to Improve
Access to Economic Opportunities". I'm going to pass it over to my partners here -- Ishould say not here, but our partners at department of health and human services. Angela
and Erica?
>> ERICA FLEISCHER: My name is Erica Fleischer. We're really excited for thisopportunity to bring together human services workforce and transportation officials to
discuss how we can use transportation solutions to access economic opportunities. So
going to ask Danielle first to go over some housekeeping items for us.
>> Wonderful. I want to let you know you can ask questions anytime during this webinar
through the chat feature. And right now, you are in listen only mode. But we will unmute
your lines at the end during the question and answer. We just ask that you don't put us on
hold during that part so you're able to hear and can ask questions. Also, the webinar
slides, we are going to provide them to everyone that registered. We'll be sending an email out and you'll get a PDF of the slides. Also, the webinar is being recorded and will be
posted at the National Center for Mobility and Management website on their webinars I will
also include this link in the follow-up e-mail you're going to receive after this webinar.
Again, send your questions to the chat function at any time. We will also have questions at
the end also through the conference call line. We will take questions from both. And I'll
pass it back over.
>> ERICA FLEISCHER: Thank you, Danielle. Today, we're going to have a chance tohear from Angela Green from the Administration for Children & Families. Then Danielle
will discuss the Coordinating Council on Access and Mobility, what's happening at thenational level from the Federal Transit Administration, followed by innovation from across
FTA from our region five and region seven colleagues. Judy Shanley will discuss theoverview of mobility management as a solution from the National Center for Mobility andManagement. And then we will have state examples from our colleagues in Ohio and Iowa
followed by Q&A. So now I would like to welcome Angela Green with ACF's regional
administrator for region five and region seven to give you context to ACF's work in thisarea. Angela.
>> ANGELA GREEN: Thank you, Erica and thank you all for being here with us today. I
would like to tell you a little bit about ACF, Administration for Children & Families priority
areas and how they relate to the issues that we are going to discuss today. I want to give
you a quick highlight of our assistant secretary Lynn Johnson's direction and the policy
priority areas for the administration right now. There are six major areas where our energy1has been focused which you see listed in front of you. It is important to note that we do not
see these priority areas as isolated one-offs, but as a cohesive plan at addressing wholefamily success. And our centerpiece policy area right now is really the promotion of workand self-sufficiency. Our commitment to the promotion of work and self-sufficiency acrosslines is a high priority right now, one aspect will be to work deeply with our states andtribes that are interested in engaging with us on how to leverage benefit programs andfederal funding to support advancing work with our most vulnerable population. To that
end, Christine Quinn, who I see is on here as well, she's the regional administrator for
Department of Labor ETA in region five. We will be hosting a joint regional convening in
Kansas City, Missouri. We're having others convene and talk about how we can advanceeconomic mobility for families. And I would like to just take a moment to wish Christine
Quinn a happy birthday. She shares a birthday with me on today. Our other priority area
is promoting fatherhood and human services. In October of last year, we published an IM,
information memorandum, on integrating approaches that prioritize and enhance father
engagement. The purpose of this information memorandum was to strongly encourage all
human service agencies to work together across government programs to jointly create
and maintain an environment that prioritizes fathers and father engagement as a real
critical factor to strengthening families and also to adopt approaches that enhance parental
involvement in all family support and child welfare related programs. So ACF is working
on a comprehensive strategy across all of our ACF programs and the office of childsupport enforcement is an active partner this that. Now, also focusing on early childhood
education programs, we really want to have a more coherent programmatic strategy in thisarea. Our inspector Lynn Johnson recently announced our office of head start's director -national director, she is also taking on a new role right now to coordinate earth childhood
development efforts across ACF programs. She will work with us to coordinate thoseefforts. We really want to lift up the coordination of early childhood development
programs. We recognize in order for families to thrive we must really focus on primaryprevention and child welfare. So we want to curtail families from entering into an intrusive
system and maintain safety and wellbeing. So we're shifting resources toward primaryprevention in the arena of child welfare. Jerry milliner over children's bureau is working
with faith and tribes in jurisdictions and engaging other federal partners including CMS andnon-federal partners around leveraging opportunities through our family first legislation.
So when you look at and when you think of how to provide a holistic approach to selfsufficiency and across programs and funding streams, the importance of datainteroperability becomes critical. Last year, ACF launched the interoperability action plan,and this work is being led by the office of planning and research and evaluation. ACF is
actively working to implement and expand information sharing across programs and levelsof government and we are also working well and responding to the barriers that states
have lifted up to us and that jurisdictions have lifted up to us, and we are trying to work
across systems when they're looking at their data systems. So removing barriers,
streamlining process, and removing duplication is a key priority for the administration as
well as for HHS for health and human services. The Department of health and humanservices ranks number one among all the counted agencies for deregulatory savings andderegulatory actions and the Department of health and human services is responsible forover half across the federal government. Lynn Johnson has made a commitment to
reduce the bureaucracy in ACF and create a stop-doing list to identify ways of2bureaucracy. So hopefully you've heard just a couple of things here in my review of ourpriority areas. And one of the themes I hope you were able to pick up on is the priority ofreally collaborating and working across program lines to meet families' needs in a holistic
way. The other would be finding those gaps and closing those loopholes for families. In
our discussion today, as even we talk with other -- with states and many of our grantees,
the issues of transportation constantly comes up. Especially in rural areas. Their ability towork and secure family-sustained wage jobs is limited if they do not have access totransportation and that's why our conversation here today is so important. So I now would
like to get to the meat of the matter and I would like to welcome Danielle Nelson from theFederal Transit Administration, and she will take it from here. Danielle?
>> DANIELLE NELSON: Thank you so much. We appreciate our colleagues at theadministration for children and families being here and helping us put this joint webinar on
together today. I wanted to quickly mention why this partnership has come about.
Through the Coordinating Council on Access and Mobility which was started in 2004
through an executive order by George W. Bush was put in our transportation authorization
for us back in December 2015, and it gave us direction to begin collaborating in a newway. There are 11 federal agencies that are part of the CCAM. It's chaired by oursecretary at U.S. DOT and HHS is a very valuable partner. The mission is to improvetransportation coordination, both the availability and accessibility as well as efficiency fortransportation disadvantaged populations. And those are older adults, people withdisabilities, and those with limited or low income. And so I wanted to highlight there areover 80 federal programs that can fund transportation. And I want to highlight “May” fund.
It's not necessarily the target/purpose of the program, but transportation is an eligible
expense. What you see on the screen here is just a small example of some of the HHS
funding programs. And I specifically listed the 14 programs out of ACF that may fundtransportation. We worked very closely with our federal partners to develop a list, aninventory of these 14 programs, specifically looking at what is the CFDA number so you
can look it up, what's the statutory reference, what's the 2018 authorized expenditures foreach of these programs, as well as can these programs fund mobility management, one
call, one click centers, is a vehicle an eligible purpose, etc. Along with the slides, you'll
receive a copy of this form with 14 ACF programs listing more information. We just don't
have time to go into them on this webinar. I wanted to highlight any of the programs listed
are eligible to coordinate in transportation, coordination is important to these programs.
And the purpose of the CCAM is about coordination and to define what coordinatedtransportation is, it's about helping underserved populations, this transportation
disadvantaged populations and helping them to be able to contribute to their community
including their economic outlook, helping them to lead healthy, productive lives by having
access. And by coordinating through our programs, it increases the efficiency. If we shareresources, we can save funds, reduce duplication, it allows us to be more innovative, etcetera. I just wanted to quickly highlight in 2018, we did a CCAM focus group. We wentaround to five states as well as did a large numbers of online dialogues -- the main fivethings that came out across all the different stakeholder groups is listed here. It wasn't justtalking with transportation stakeholders, we talked with department of education,
Department of labor, HHS stakeholders, etc. We went and spoke with all 11 different
CCAM agency stakeholders and they all had the same barriers, these top five. The first3

one being limited awareness. There was a real lack of awareness of the federal funding
sources. Who can blame them? There's over 80. We're working to update that list. I wantto move on and also share that the National Center for Mobility and Management in 2018,
did a national survey. They had a total of 549 respondents. I want to quickly highlightsome of the responses – from those who said they receive HHS funding. In that survey, I
just wanted to highlight this one question, the responses from it, which the large takeaway
is that HHS-funded respondents most frequently participate in transportation coordinating
councils, but a significant number do not participate in any transportation coordination
activity. I think we have a lot of great room for increasing our coordination amongst our
two networks. So, thank you for being here today. One last thing I wanted to mention
from that survey, in terms of availability, is that almost all HHS funded respondents believe
their communities lack transportation services and options and that it negatively impacts
the HHS funded services. Really echoing Angela and Erica's comments, we cancollaborate and improve the transportation or lack thereof in our rural communities to help
increase access to the services that ACF funds. And lastly, I wanted to share thisopportunity, the CCAM directed the development of a new course. It's brand-new, juststarted this year. It's called advancing mobility management. It's offered through thenational transit institute. It's a great opportunity for transportation and non-Transportation
stakeholders. Help you to do the great things you're going to hear from Jeremy and Olivia
today in your states. The 2019 courses are listed there. There was just one in Iowa which
I know Jeremy attended. In 2020, we're also going to be back in this region in Minnesota.
It's going to be hosted and offered to the Minnesota DOT in St. Paul. The date is to be
determined. The URL link is right there to get more information. And with that, I am goingto pass things over to my FTA regional colleagues and Susan.
>> SUSAN WEBER: Thanks, Danielle. I'm Susan Weber with FTA region five. I have thepleasure of working with a number of the states in our region. And gratefully, FTA'sregional structure matches that of ACF. So you'll see highlighted here on the slide is thesix states that FTA region five covers. I'm going to go over five of them because we have
Olivia presenting later who will share the fantastic things going on in Ohio. But just to start,
there is a wide variety of the level of mobility management happening from what we see inregion five. And it's really encouraging that it's on everybody's radar screen. To start with,
Indiana is working to develop a statewide mobility management network and there's
ongoing conversations and some face-to-face discussions held in December of 2019 withboth state and local and state agencies. And the goal was to just share ideas and begin
conversations to leverage resources to develop that network. To name a few of theparticipants in these meetings was FFSA, the state independent living center, theAmerican temple of the blind, health by design, Indiana DOT, the federal highway
administration, and NFTA. And from U.S. DOT's perspective, there's a tangible next step
to be done in getting this off the ground in Indiana. And that is annually the federal
highway administration and federal transit administration send out a planning emphasisarea letter to the state DOT. And in included in the fiscal year 2020 letter as an emphasisarea was steps for the development of a mobility management network. So this is quite
encouraging. We are -- in that letter, we encourage Indiana DOT to work with other stateagencies to identify service capacity and gaps and explore how diverse state agencies cancontribute to a mobility management effort. And to think beyond about the next steps for4sustained activity within the mobility management network. So that's very exciting news
that is -- is really getting off the ground in the state of Indiana. Next I'll highlight Michigan.
And you'll see on the slide there, the $8 million Michigan mobility challenge. That was
kicked off in May of 2018. And it's a huge collaboration of the Michigan department oftransportation, planet M which is the Michigan economic development corporation, theMichigan Department of Health and Human Services, the Michigan Veterans Affairs
agency, the bureau of services for blind persons and the Michigan Department of Civil
Rights, that includes the division on the deaf, deaf-blind and hard of hearing. In that
MDOT will be distributing $8 million to fund multiple innovative pilot transportation projectsof varying sizes across the state that can solve mobility gaps for seniors, persons withdisabilities, and veterans in urban and rural and suburban communities throughout thestate of Michigan. As an example, the MTA in Flint, Michigan, was funded for their vets towellness. FTA has funded Flint, Michigan, MTA's ride to wellness program. It's been agreat collaboration with HHS there in part in response to the water crisis. So there's greatcollaboration happening there. Turning to Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Department ofTransportation is really heavily invested in intensive training program for their mobility
managers. And it has strong ongoing support for mobility management. The staff at the
DOT's bureau of transit consistency lifts up and encourages the support of mobility
management throughout the state. They have an organization and a website. And I would
encourage those located in the state of Wisconsin to reach out to them as a resource. The
Minnesota council on transportation access, this is -- this is very interesting. It began -- thestate recognized that accessible transit is a necessity for people with low income, people
with disabilities and older adults. And it's also essential for economic growth and vitality.
But there's a complex web of transit funding and regulation at all levels of government thatcreate barriers to establishing accessible and efficient transit system. I think this is what
CCAM is getting at the heart of and Minnesota is helping in that. The Minnesota council
on transportation access was established by the Minnesota state legislature during -- in2010, and its admission is to work together to remove those obstacles preventing the
successful coordination of transportation programs and resources. There are 13 separate
agencies and organizations represented on the council, which is tasked with 20 duties andrelated to five key issue areas. And then through the creation of high-value toolsets,
coordination with the Minnesota state legislature and aggressive advocacy, the council isdriving progress in each of those five issue areas. I'd also like to highlight the RTA in the
Chicagoland area. They have a very extensive mobility management program and do a lot
on mobility management and travel training. There is a website listed here. When you-all
receive the slide deck, you'll be able to -- to link to that. And you'll see a series of videos
that just kind of walk you step by step through the process. And I've been to presentations
by their mobility manager, and they encourage the use of these videos as training and justas learning tools. So it's just another great resource I thought that hi would share with you.
And with that, as I mentioned, I'll have Olivia speak on all the wonderful things happening
in Ohio. I'm going to turn it over to my colleague in FTA's region seven's office, Cathy
Monroe.
>> CATHY MONROE: Good afternoon. My name is Cathy Monroe. I'm the region sevendirector of planning program development. I want to thank everyone for attending thiswebinar on behalf of our regional administrator. I'm excited to participate in today's
5webinar. This forum offers us, the regional officers, an opportunity to encourage as well as
stress the importance of coordination amongst not only transit providers, but with ourfederal -- other federal, state, and local agency partners in an effort to maximize existingtransportation options to access not only education, but the jobs and health care. With that
said, I'd like to highlight a few region seven projects in the state of Missouri that have beensuccessful in establishing new partnerships in coordination of different services that arenecessary to improve the quality of life in our communities. As noted in the agenda,
Jeremy Johnson will be presenting the state of Iowa's efforts. So as our office becomes
more involved with this initiative, I'm hoping that we can showcase more rural projects on
future calls and webinars. So starting with Kansas City, where KCATA is a regional transit
provider, they have implemented a RideshareKC mobility management program that helps
riders find alternative commuter opportunities and assists employers with transportation
programs. This program is unique because it connects transportation experts toemployers free of cost that assist in establishing company transit benefit programs that
help their employees find easy alternatives to driving alone. In addition, RideKC Freedom
On-Demand was established that gives not only paratransit customers more transit
flexibility, but is open to everyone. The freedom on demand program is an app-based
program available in the Google Play store or Apple app store and provides same-day
transportation to everyone. It allows anyone to book a cab ride without 24 hours’ noticerequired of paratransit. It provides sucks DIEZed trips for -- subsidized trips for riders withdisabilities as well as riders with non-ADA issues. This program also allows veterans toride for free. So onto the east side of the state in St. Louis, the bi-state development
agency has received many grants from the Missouri foundation for health to help pay forthe 18-month trial program. This program started in 2017 and is called link markets. It
established kiosks which sell fresh fruit, vegetables, milk and other staples aimed tooffering healthy options to residents. From this evolved the St. Louis mobile market
established in the summer of 2018. This also works to provide access to healthyaffordable food in the St. Louis food deserts. St. Louis has also been successful inestablishing other partnerships with the public health and the St. Louis department ofcounty. It established program links to health which is a mobile health screening van at
the same two transit centers where link markets have been established, plus two morestations where -- that do not have the link markets. Screening for diabetes and bloodpressure are among the basic services that are provided for people 18 and older. The
screenings were funded by a federal grant aimed at transit riders in communities near thetransit centers. So with these projects, I encourage each of you to continue your outreachefforts to other federal, state, and local agencies to continue your coordination of services
that will make a difference in our communities.
Next, Judy Shanley of the Easterseals in the National Center for Mobility and Management
will provide an overview on mobility management.
>> JUDY SHANLEY: Thanks, Cathy, hi, everybody. I'm the director for the National
Center for Mobility and Management. I've worked with many of you. I'm the regional
liaison from NCMM to regions one, four, five, and seven. So hopefully you know me andwe've communicated before. But I really think as you are thinking about how to implement
innovative solutions to address economic mobility or access to health or whatever your6

frame may be, think about mobility management as a platform for doing that. It's like a
puzzle. So all of the different agencies of all different programs and a mobility manager
and a mobility management network is that structure that's putting all the piece -- pieces
together in a coordinated and efficient way. Always at the heart of it is the customer andthe needs of the community. So I encourage you, if you do have a mobility management
network in your state, tap into that network as a repository of resources. On the next slide,I went to the Ohio public transit association meeting recently and someone describedmobility management as boots on the ground. That's exactly what mobility management
is. The folks that work in the professions across states really know the needs of the riders
and the various audience members in that community and they know the transportation
services that may be available. And they're instrumental in identifying innovations. In
Ohio, I learned about a program and Olivia can certainly share more information about thisprogram, but what she -- what the program was, was employers had gotten together torecognize that they needed transportation in order to recruit and retain qualified
employees. And so they teamed up with a transit agency and the mobility managers in thecommunity and developed a ride program that visited all of the business sites throughout
the -- one particular region. And it was really successful in delivering to the employers thepeople they needed. We did a national survey with the University of Illinois Chicago called
the state of the state's report. I wanted to share with you very briefly some outcomes ofthat report in terms of where we are regarding mobility management. We found that statesthat had mobility management networks, they were factors at multiple levels that reallyfacilitated the launch of those networks. And I'm not going to read you all of these, but as
you are developing your networks in your state, think about these considerations. Think
about the communication mechanisms that you have in place across agencies, acrossthose various state agencies that support human services and other services forcommunity members. Think about who the lead of that network is going to be, who can bea catalyst for making this happen. Secondary variables include the technical expertise.
So having people not only from the DOT in your state, but other agencies that at least canbe a conduit to information about transportation services and work most closely with the
DOTs and the transit agencies in your state. And then finally, a catalyst or things likemembers see collaboration as the best interest of all users. So it's not something that has
to be done. It's something that you're better as a whole rather than individual parts. On
the next slide, I wanted to just highlight some of the data that we found in this study -- inthis national study. We have reached out to 49 state level professionals. And we had a
response rate where 21 actually completed the survey. On the next slide, 14 of those 21 -so about 67% -- indicated that they did have a statewide network. And it was interestingthat one of the respondents indicated they didn't know whether they had a statewide
network which kind of goes back to what our national survey found is that awarenessabout transportation services and mobility kind of support for diverse populations reallyneeds better awareness. So on the next -- this slide, the statewide networks vary in theirgeographic scale. In Illinois, it's really a locally based Chicagoland area and other states
like Wisconsin and Ohio and Iowa, they're huge networks of states. They may haveregional contacts. The lead agency in most are the DOTs, but that's not always the case.
And we don't have a lot of empirical evidence regarding outcomes right now. That's
something that we're really interested in from NCMM's perspective is measuring what are
the outcomes, not just outputs, but outcomes of these mobility managing networks. So
7

DOTs are really supportive of these programs in many of the cases. And five out of the 14
have performance measurement plans and that's when we talked about, you know, how
do you measure the -- the outputs and the outcomes of mobility management, what's thereturn on investment. I think that's really an important thing to look as is the performancemeasures and making sure you've got a system in place that includes all the stateagencies, not just transit, not just DOT. On the next slide, just some examples. We asked
the respondents who indicated they had a mobility management network, what are someof the things that your networks do. Number one was really developing informationmaterials or products to inform, and that is a critical piece of just knowing about all themobility innovations may exist. That was followed by two identifying transportation needs,
and offering options for improved services. So there is not one model of mobility
management in a state or local level. There is not one type of mobility manager, but
overall these are some of the characteristics or job features that mobility managers
undertake. On the next slide, we asked Nevada Department of Transportation to reallycomment on what he saw as the value of mobility management. This slide reads, of thosecommunities being served by mobility manager, the community has a greater acceptanceof public transit and a stronger knowledge of services available. That awareness comesfrom all sectors, health and human services, education, labor, even justice, evendepartments of corrections. Our center -- our website is indicated there. We're reallyavailable to you as state agencies across agencies to support the -- your building ofmobility management networks, your sustaining of the network. We're really good atconnecting you with other people around the country. As Jeremy and Olivia can attest to.
On the next slide, I put some other FTA funded resources. We're siloed. I'm an educatorby background. It's traditionally my go-to resources on the education human services
sector. But really if -- if these resources can be valuable from any perspective and any
professional discipline you have. So take advantage of them. Most of the resources thatcome out of these national FTA funded centers are free and available to you. And then on
the next slide, this is one of my favorite quotes. If you always do what you've always done,
you'll always get what you've always got. So this is a time to be innovative and creative
regarding mobility and transportation. We're so glad that you as non-transportation people
are part of this conversation. So my contact information is on the next slide. And I want toturn it over to one of the two national champions that I see in this field, Olivia Hookoversees the Ohio mobility management network. So Olivia?
>> OLIVIA HOOK: Thank you very much, Judy. Thank you all for joining us today. I'mreally excited about talking about mobility management in Ohio. We've been doing somereally exciting things. And just improving our network and our ability to serve the residentsof Ohio and we just have a lot of improvements happening and I'm just excited that I get to
be a part of that. So next slide, thank you. One thing that our mobility managers havebeen beefing up is providing transportation information on a local level. Some of theseguides look like they've been tossed on the screen. Dy that on purpose because -- I did
that on purpose. I wanted to get the image of these are flyers. These are a one-stop
resource that mobility managers can hand out to the residents that way they have areference guide in their own homes. Especially the most vulnerable populations, they
don't necessarily have the technology right at their fingertips available to get all that
information together. A lot of times in the rural areas, not every transportation provider
8

even has a website. Having this stuff available is so valuable on a local level. Mobility
managers have been getting better about gathering all this information together to provide
this to Ohio residents. We have a lot of guides all over Ohio, and we're working on just
improving the way that we can provide that information for everyone. Next slide, please.
One other thing, too, is that the mobility managers in Ohio have been connecting
individuals with other programs. They developed relationships with other programs so that
we can work together. For example, the Ohio department of Medicaid has been coming toour roundtables to talk about transportation problems so they understand mobility
managers are there as a connector to communicate with individuals. And actually also bea sounding board to relay that information back to Medicaid that, you know, thoseindividuals that are struggling to get transportation. And also with a survey result thatcome out of asking the questions of unmet needs to see why, you know, trips were -- there
were no-shows or something like that because sometimes it has a lot more to do -- more to
do with than just the transportation piece. It could be a number of options, whether it was,you know, a family emergency and things like that. So just communicating that
information. Also CNCS and RFCPs. That's a great network to tap into because
transportation is a big part of -- you know, one of the biggest parts of what they do, too.
Connecting with mobility managers to try to make sure they have the outreach that theyneed on a local level and also working together so you don't have duplication of trips, thatkind of stuff. But all of these different organizations, there is a major need for rural areas
having transportation not available for low income individuals who are trying to hold a job,
keep a job, have a vehicle to get them to their job. And it is really -- it's daunting and it's
really challenging for them. Mobility managers have been coming together to findinitiatives to find solutions for those individuals and help them out and try to get thecommunity together. Get employers on deck in understanding that they can have a role increating a solution. So I can tell you more about some of the outcomes that come out ofthat here soon. But all of these programs, the mobility managers work together to utilize
these programs to be a resource for the individuals to connect them with the rightresources or the right program. And basically enhance each other. Next slide, please. So
here's the current vision of what mobility management looks like in Ohio. We have 29
mobility managers. Right now, we have 24 in the rural areas and five are your ban. I have
11 covering multiple counties. A lot of counties have tens of thousands of residents living
their county with different demographics and different backgrounds. Just one mobility
manager as a resource for one county can be really challenging. Have a mobility manager
as a resource for multiple counties is even more so. It's really difficult to be available on a
one-on-one basis to residents when you're covering more than one county. However, wefound so much of a benefit because mobility managers can cover more counties thatwould normally not have a coordinated plan and to have a coordinated plan, that's
something that providers would need to have to apply for 5310 funding which is applying
for a vehicle for specialized transportation for transporting seniors and persons withdisabilities. So having a mobility manager that has the experience of writing thecoordinated plan cover your county to even establish the coordinated plan is so valuable toget funding dollars locally to have vehicles to transport individuals. And they're just -- like
Judy said, the boots on the ground. They are there to make sure that things are in placeso that the community can benefit from these opportunities. Next slide, please. And this is
one huge question that comes up when you have rural areas. What if there are no9

transportation options available? Now, it's really important to understand how to make an
impact in the community. So next slide. And I mentioned the coordinated plan. So theseare vital. It's just becoming a living, breathing document that is very important. It has acomplete assessment of all of the demographics of the community -- sorry, of the entire
county, and it talks about all transportation providers, the community needs. And this is -the community needs are gathered from public surveys that come from the -- you know,
the residents and especially they focus on trying to get that information from thoseresidents who are struggling with transportation, the elderly and persons with disabilities
and getting that information. This is a requirement to apply for the 5310 funds for vehicle.
So to get the vehicles in your county to have a transportation options for those individuals
you're trying to serve, this is very important for mobility managers. It's a cycle that is vitalthat they understand this. This is part of putting the cart before the -- not the cart before
the horse, but the horse before the cart. So the plan cannot be done behind closed doors.
It must involve public participation. That's the most beautiful part of it because this plan isdesigned to be focus 100% around the individuals that it's there to serve. It's the purposeof it is to serve those individuals so that it -- it also requires participation from thoseindividuals. So it's really a wonderful thing. And this is a part of what you can -- if there isa transportation option available in the community, this is the start of it. It's communicatingthat through the coordinated plan so that funding can be applied for. So -- this isassessing the fact that there is a need in their community so that we can start the processof finding funding options. So if you would like to get involved with your local coordinatedplans, I would recommend contacting your local mobility manager. If you don't have amobility manager, search for your county lead agency. Lot of times on like Ohio
Department of Transportation, we have it on our website. But we just recently did that. It's
really difficult to gather all that information. Contact your local Department ofTransportation and find out who your local lead agency in your county is so you can be on
board with those discussions. Also contribute at public meetings and plan surveys. That's
how it ends up on the plan, and then the mobility managers actually are the boots on the
ground bringing those plans up, bringing up the goals, the fact that these are unmet needs
and we need to start working on those and getting funding for them and getting the traction
going on these plans. So it has to start somewhere. Next slide. And to wrap this up, I
wanted to tell you a few stories about the things that have been going on around Ohio
because here is some of the coordinated plan outcomes that are from 2018. And so, forexample, Fayette county, which is about I'm going to say 40 miles south of Columbus,
Ohio, which is our capital, they have -- they developed a deviated fixed route that goesfrom local apartments senior center and independent living facilities to the local grocery
stores, Walmart, pharmacies, there's a strip mall with a gym. They were able to, throughthat coordinated plan process and assessing everyone's needs, they were able to do apilot program where they developed this deviated route and now it's a fully establishedprogram. And it only cost residents 50 cents per trip on the shuttle, and it has a one-hour
circulation. And that started with a coordinated plan. I actually rode along on that last year
and talked to a few residents who use it. And I mean it's just critical. They really love it.
They're excited that that's available in their communities. You can just tell -- I was riding
with one resident who had a disability, and he was excited that he was going to be able to
go to the gym when normally he wasn't going to be able to do that, he doesn't haveanybody that can give him that trip. Another example is over in Logan county, the Honda
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facility in Ohio is located just in Logan county, the county line between Logan and union
county. The mobility manager had a lot of feedback from individuals that employmenttransportation was extremely difficult because there was none. The Honda facility is out inthe middle of a very rural area. There are no sidewalks going out there. It's out in the
country. If you're driving out there, half the time you're on a dirt road, not even a paved
road. So going to the Honda facility or even the surrounding manufacturing companies
that have employment, you would need to have somebody give you a ride or get a taxi.
He was able to contact all of those manufacturing company employers, HR departments,
get them on board, and just as far as support, not monetary support, but just more verbal
support of this effort. But with her doing all of that, it got the attention of the local
commissioner. And that sparked a really exciting opportunity for Logan County. Logan
County was given $70,000 in 2018 for a pilot program to have an employment shuttle
going from the town of bell fountain to the Honda facility and the surrounding
manufacturing companies for the temp agencies so that they can -- those employees who
would normally not be able to afford transportation could utilize that shuttle. From what
I've heard, it has been very successful. It's going -- it's very well received by the
population. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how that -- they're not sure how the funding isgoing to continue and who's going to pay for this because even though it's beensuccessful, the funding is always the most difficult thing to work past. Another thing, too, isin Shelby county, there were -- the mobility manager came together, was talking to all thetransportation providers about getting reduced fare for low income individuals. She wasactually able to contact local legions who wanted to pour money back into theircommunities. So they were able to sponsor a program where they can pick up the cost of
the other halves of that transportation cost for low income individuals. So that it canbalance out. And finally, we had a transit system in Mount Gilead. It's a local bus shuttle.
It's called a 5311 program through the efforts of mobility management and assessing thefact that there has been such a great need in that county. 5311 was awarded. Now they
have a rural transit system that just started this year and they have a fixed route and theresidents are really excited. I've seen a lot of stuff in the news recently. And I was therewith that mobility manager from the beginning. It's really exciting to hear what is going -exciting to hear what is going on in Morrow county. These are some of the things
happening in Ohio. It's really exciting. I've got a lot of mobility managers who are really
eager to continue to do new and innovative things. Now I'm going to hand it over toJeremy to tell you all about Iowa.
>> JEREMY JOHNSON-MILLER: Thank you, Olivia, and thank you, everyone. So I'll
briefly touch on what Iowa's working on. And so as you can see, I am the mobility andtransit programs administrator with the Iowa DOT office of public transit. I wanted to firststart with how our state is set up. So back in 1976, we actually passed a -- what we'recalling the first in the nation that we're aware of -- coordination law. So we havetransportation coordination in our state. And so within that, we've established compliancereviews and advisory council that Danielle talked about earlier. And so out of that, we'vebeen able to create this council, have established members, which initially you'll see there
on the screen is Department of Transportation, human services and department on aging.
And so we moved onto sort of take part in the United We Ride initiative and out of that wewere introduced to mobility management and then garnering some funds from JARC and11new freedom and establishing the mobility network in 2009. So here's our current
membership listing for the transportation coordination council. As you can see, it's reallyexpanded beyond that initial list. And so you can see we've got some advocacy typegroups, we've got AARP, cancer society -- [ No audio ] -- of providers and so we're hopingthat we can continue to move forward. Last year, we did a formal retreat with our group.
And so we -- we first looked at all of the CCAM goals that Danielle and her group are
working on. So we adopted three of their four goals. So those are to improve access tothe community through transportation, enhance cost effectiveness of coordinatedtransportation, and strengthen interagency partnership in collaboration with state, local,
and industry groups. So that will be a part of our mission and strategies moving forwardwith the coordination council and with public transit in Iowa. So here is our map of how
we're situated in the state. We're situated with city systems, urban systems, but also rural
regions as well. We are covered in all 99 counties. So we have 35 transit systems
throughout the state. Our 2018 ridership was a little over 25 million rides. And we'reoperating on 1,700 vehicles throughout the entire state. And there's our coordination offunding local either tax dollars, tax levies on home ownership, passenger revenue statetransit assistance that we get from the state legislature and monies from FTA. Here is the
distribution of our mobility coordinators. So we -- we align our mobility coordination efforts
with the transit agencies. And so, as you can see, they are aligned with those transit
boundaries. I am diligently working with other state agencies to try and fill in that whitearea of the map which is my service area. So I stay pretty busy with trying to figure out
different angles and different ways that we can partner and figure out what's happening
locally and try to make that work and happen all together. There's contact information foreach of those which will be shared to everyone. But I wanted to touch on some of thehealth care and workforce issues that we've been working on. Last year, we developed a - an MOU with the Department of Public Health. Really wanted to focus on the
improvement of health and well-being of Iowans and enhance our coordination together.
Through that, we developed Iowa walking college which is using curriculum from thenational partner of America walks. That is essentially working with anybody who applies.
It's free to attend. It's a six-week program that teaches everyone to -- how to work with
their local officials, how to work with the DOT to make livable, walkable communities. So
it's really just immersing yourself into that process of how to get a walking pass or how tomake your main street a little more walkable and how to approach those efforts to keep
everything localized and not set up those boundaries. And next on our agenda is to look at
the community health needs assessments that are submitted every year through the local
public health providers. Within there, there is a transportation component. And so
historically, those have been pretty low in terms of what's reported or what is being
addressed in terms of transportation. So we're looking at those a little bit closer and thengoing to select several communities that we can start working with, both myself and publichealth, to determine what sort of effort do we need to facilitate to make that a little bit betterof a partnership. And so also ongoing, American Cancer Society, we've partnered on athree-year grant with Iowa Cancer Consortium funding. So what we're doing is providing
educational forums for health care workers, specifically at cancer treatment facilities in two
communities within Iowa, but also inviting transportation providers to that table to talkabout how we can all work together. But along with that grant, we have monetaryassistance that we can provide with getting people to their appointments and making sure12

that the no-show rate and everything is drastically reduced. One little tidbit that I will shareis one of our -- one of our bigger health care providers in Des Moines is actually partneringwith Uber in arranging trips with that Uber providers in the area to get people to health careappointments. So that's something they did on their own, but it spawned from theconversations we were doing. Something that's controlled from our office is Iowa
RideShare. This is just a way to help Iowans to get around. We're really just a host forconnecting people with rides either formally on like an established DART ride share out of
Des Moines. They reach several counties outside of the Des Moines metro, but also
individual riders who want to commute to work or anything like that. But we have heardsome stories where people needed to go to a job training or something like that where
they'll connect with someone who is already going to a location to work and they've
connected through that. So we've heard some stories. So we're happy with the outcome
there. And we can tailor the landing page to any of the providers that want to use it for
their customers. So there are some of the examples. So I wanted to highlight two innorthern Iowa. We have the Winnebago facility. If anybody has a Winnebago, that's madein Iowa, so you can learn that today. It's also located in Forrest City which is a pretty ruralcommunity. They were having trouble getting employees to come to that location. So they
started looking at nearby areas like Mason City, which is about 45 minutes away, to get
employees. What they were hearing is they couldn't get there or they didn't havedependable transportation. So through a different combination of funding, we were able toget them off the ground for a two-year grant that we gave them and provided two buses
and two years of operating to get them started. Within that first year, they had 5,800
riders. Two years later, they were up -- up another 3,000 riders to 8,800 riders. I justlooked at the ridership today. It's still around that 8,500 ridership mark. So it's wildly
popular and quite a bit of people are getting to and from work. When it first started, it was
just morning and afternoon. But now it's multiple times a day and circulating throughout
the area. DART Des Moines is one of our bigger providers of that employment-typetransportation with their DART ride share vans. They also work with a lot of employers toprovide -- not a health care benefit, but a benefit of being employed with, you know, a big
employer, a bank, law firm, health care type organizations, you name it, they're all signed
on. And that's a benefit of being an employee there. It's pretty common within other states
to do something similar, but I wanted to highlight, too, this is something that is definitely
happening and they're looking forward to either more business development or somethingthat they can keep moving forward. Just last year, they got two new routes developed thatwere previously not in operation. And it was all because of that partnership with local
businesses that either helped pay for the new route to get their employees there or throughthat employee assistance program. And so I will end that here and if anybody has
questions, I am happy to answer them.
>> JUDY SHANLEY: Thank you, Jeremy. This is Judy. We have hit the top of the hour,
and there has been some conversations and questions going on in the chat function.
Does anyone have any burning questions? You have our contact information, so you cancontact any one of us after the webinar after you've reviewed the materials that we'regoing to send you. Does anyone have any questions, type them in the chat box now. And
while we're waiting to see if that happens, I want to thank all --13

>> All participants are now in interactive talk mode.
>> -- if anyone has a question, they could raise their hand on the chat ->> Judy, everyone's phones are unmuted.
>> Yep. Yep. Heard that. So you could either use the phone to say your question or typein your question in the chat box.
>> ERICA FLEISCHER: This is Erica. I just wanted to bring up Christine Quinn who typed
in the chat she sees Iowa's list doesn't include workforce. I don't know if you want tocomment about coordination with workforce in Iowa.
>> Jeremy?
>> JEREMY JOHNSON-MILLER: Yes. So we have a few organizations that are very, very
close with workforce development. So Iowa vocational rehabilitation services and we have
had one member fall off of that list. So that's why they're not currently on that list. And so,
as mentioned, we're trying to move forward with forging those partnerships and making
sure that we get everybody included. And a side note, we -- myself and other colleague dosit on a few of their councils as well. So the conversation isn't stagnant there, but we're
trying to get people to the table.
>> And Jeremy, you raised a very good point. As state agency professionals, you-all canhelp your mobility managers in your state and your DOTs identify opportunities that they
could be involved in your forum. You know, especially as we're trying to facilitate thiscoordination, you can be valuable in helping us think about the language that best reaches
your audience and would best motivate your grantees and your audiences to participate inmobility management and coordinated efforts in the state. So I don't see any questions in
the chat box.
>> Judy, I will make sure -- this is Danielle from FTA. I'm going to send out an e-mail toeveryone who registered with the slides and that spreadsheet I mentioned. If you havequestions, respond directly to me at Danielle.Nelson@DOT.gov. I will make sure I trackdown the answer to our question. I wanted to thank our ACF colleagues and two statecolleagues and regional colleagues. Thank you so much to your time and thank you to all
who listened in today.
>> Thank you. Bye, everybody.
>> And thank you, everyone.
>> Thanks, bye.

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