Rural Feeder Service represents a start

The new Rural Feeder Service will help people who would otherwise lose paratransit service completely, but organizers say its early incarnation is not the final solution.

The paratransit boundary change is being made to comply with the terms of a 1999 STA legal settlement regarding who would be eligible for paratransit service. At the time, STA agreed to serve people within 1 1/2 miles for five years before moving to the Americans with Disabilities Act standard of three-quarters of a mile.

Paratransit customers within the ¾-mile boundary will not be affected.

In some ways, though, the rural feeder service will be inferior to paratransit service.

The hours it will be initially offered are more limited, primarily weekdays and no evenings.

Riders will have to schedule their trips at least two days in advance rather than just the daylong notice they need to give now.

And trips will likely take 45 minutes to an hour longer.

The good news is that there will be no extra charge and, with STA coordinating the scheduling of both the transfer service and paratransit trips, riders only need to make one call.

And transfer van drivers will never leave riders alone at the transfer points. They will always wait for the paratransit van, and vice versa.

Only existing paratransit riders will be able to use the feeder service. If paratransit riders move into the rural feeder service area after Jan. 16, they won’t be eligible.

That limitation concerns adult family home operator Bev Walter.

“Anyone who moves here later would be left out,” she said of her home.

Ultimately the desire is to expand the service to include more people, said Spokane Valley Church of the Nazarene Associate Pastor Chuck Wilkes.

Organizers would also like to expand the hours and offer door-to-door service in the future.

“The long-term solution is looking at a much broader vision. If we can transport a couple hundred people, once we get ourselves organized and tapped into grant funding, why couldn’t we take the rest of the people in the area?” asked Wilkes.

And though paratransit users and their advocates say the proposed service isn’t perfect, it’s a start.

“We’re so fortunate that they’ve come up with something. They seem to be willing to try anything,” Walter said.