County van pool project gets funds, lacks regular riders

A proposed county transportation program is still waiting for the right ridership to strike up a van pooling route.

If four to five people keep roughly the same schedule and destination for a length of time, the Council on Aging Specialist Transportation (COAST) will have grounds to purchase two vans and set up a regular van pool.

For the past five months, COAST has been tracking private car pools around the county.

"We think it's an idea whose time maybe hasn't come yet," said Karl Johanson, executive director of the Council on Aging and Human Services. COAST is a department in the council.

"I don't think it's real promising at this point," said County Commissioner Greg Partch who sits on the board that oversees the new transportation district.

Despite the financial woes now facing COAST (see story on COAST loss of Medicaid contract) Johanson claimed that loss will not impact the potential of launching the van program. Partch is skeptical the program would now have enough funding to start.

Citizens in Palouse and Garfield two years ago told COAST they had an ongoing population that commuted from that region to WSU and Schweitzer Engineering in Pullman.

Based on those requests, COAST last year formed a transportation district overseen by the county to create a van pooling program.

With such a district in place, COAST was able to apply for and receive $41,600 in state grant authorization to buy two vans. COAST must match those funds by 20 percent to buy the vans.

They must also have enough riders to legitimize that purchase, said Johanson. This is what they are now waiting on.

They are tracking a list of 20 citizens that commute from various destinations around the county. Groups are moving from Garfield/Palouse to Pullman, Tekoa/Malden to Palouse and Tekoa to the Spokane Valley via Fairfield.

"We haven't been able to put together much more than helping people [organize] with car pooling," Johanson said.