Over 1,000 individuals have found employment with the assistance of JobRide in each of the last several years. Meanwhile, Elsewhere States and local communities across the U.S. are coming up with creative ways to overcome the transportation barrier. Programs currently being tried include training welfare recipients in auto mechanics, then allowing them to keep the formerly inoperable cars they have repaired. Anne Arundel County, Maryland, has a particularly intriguing program. Qualified welfare recipients there are trained to start and operate their own passenger transit companies, thereby attacking the problem from two angles simultaneously.
Innovative approaches are in the works at the state level as well.
Minnesota, for example, specifically allows exceptions to welfare participants work activities if transportation is a barrier. South Carolina will stop the time clock for participants who have no access to transportation. While W-2 caseworkers have the power to excuse individuals with transportation barriers from work activities, lack of transportation is not explicitly listed as just cause for absence. It should be. The program makes available to local governments, metropolitan planning organizations and nonprofits Job Access and Reverse Commute Grants, for which two Wisconsin applications have thus far been submitted, one for the Oshkosh area and one for Milwaukee-Waukesha.