Around Des Moines

Why do you use your car or take the bus? What would you do if you did not have a car or if there were no bus? These are questions being asked at four Transportation Open Houses hosted by the Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (DMAMPO). The first meeting was held in Des Moines on February 25, 2008, during another winter snowfall, when about twenty people gathered at the United Way of Central Iowa building on Ninth Street to talk with Dylan Mullenix of the DMAMPO.

Speaking with Mullenix by phone for this article, I asked him why people should care about these meetings. He said that the state and federal funding for the Des Moines Area Transit Authority (DART) must go through the DMAMPO’s Transportation Improvement Program (TIP). The TIP is a four-year plan that is updated annually. It covers roads, bridges, and transit. However, for a DART item to be included in TIP, it must now also be included in the Passenger Transportation Development Plan (PTDP). It is this PTDP that is being discussed at the meetings that are being held in Des Moines, Indianola, and Boone.

In addition to being a prerequisite for government-funded transit services, the PTDP is intended to increase coordination of all passenger transportation services, including inter-city buses, taxis, paratransit, and regularly-scheduled local bus routes. The area covered in the plan includes Boone, Dallas, Jasper, Marion, Madison, Polk, Story, and Warren Counties, excluding the Ames metropolitan area. These counties include the planning region for the DMAMPO and for the Central Iowa Regional Transportation Planning Alliance (CIRTPA).

Another acronym important to this report is the Transportation Advisory Group (TAG). TAG is a subcommittee of the DMAMPO’s Transit Roundtable. The roundtable is composed of representatives from local and state governments, transit organizations, human services groups, and other interested persons. TAG assisted in developing the federally-required plan.

In the region there are approximately 80 organizations offering transportation services, many of them merely providing funding. for physically- or financially-challenged clientele. A survey the TAG conducted revealed that 75% of organizations offering transportation do not do so as their primary service. In addition, if other transportation resources were available, 70% of the organizations providing transportation would stop their passenger services. (Last year I was in a meeting where a service provider said it costs $25 plus travel expenses every time her agency uses its passenger van.) Funding can come through state or federal departments such as the Departments of Health and Human Services, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs.

This is the second year for the PTDP. Like the TIP, it is a four-year plan updated annually. The PTDP is a result of two actions. In 2004, the Federal Interagency Coordinating Council on Access and Mobility was created by executive order and in 2005 legislation was signed with the similar intent of encouraging coordination of transportation services. Although the federal actions were taken with the intention of making better use of limited resources for helping the disabled and the poor, the result is that any service any individual wants provided by public transportation needs to be included in the PTDP.

Highlights of the PTDP for Fiscal Years 2009-2012 include retaining the current level of service through funding for vehicles, facilities, and equipment; increasing marketing and public relations efforts to educate people about transit options; increasing access to jobs; and, increasing access to medical services. Goals for greater job access include adding a service to the Tyson Foods facility in Perry, adding a service from Boone to Jefferson, and increasing the reverse commute from Indianola to Des Moines to five days a week from the current semi-weekly schedule. The recommendation for medical care access is to have a bus run a few times a week from Ames through Des Moines to Iowa City. A mobility manager was also identified as a resource to create. The mobility manager would be a phone-based and/or web-based resource, that could provide information on all transportation options, including by disability or other selective factor, that might provide greater options than those offered to the general public. A phone-based system might be made available through the 211 resource number.

As is common with such meetings, only a few people traveled to the event by bus. One woman asked how there could be better involvement early in the planning process rather than just presenting plans to people near the end of the process. Some people suggested presenting information about the transit options on local cable access; however, in the TAG survey some respondents noted that many of their clients cannot even afford a $35 monthly bus pass. One woman suggested providing information via Hispanic-language radio stations and TAG survey responses suggested having information in languages for refugees. Including projects in the PTDP does not guarantee funding for them.

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa.