Volunteer Wheels: A Voluntary Paratransit Program

This paper describes how, since the advent of the automobile, people of the world have become more and more mobile. The automobile has certainly revolutionized our culture and enhanced our freedom of mobility. Most of us enjoy our cars and don’t think about the day when we are no longer capable of driving them. Consider for a moment what your plight would be if for one reason or another you couldn’t drive and also couldn’t ride the bus. This paper describes Volunteer Wheels, a service of the Volunteer Center of Sonoma County, California. The volunteer center is committed to volunteerism and its initial intent was to demonstrate that a primarily volunteer program could meet the needs of specialized transportation and do so less expensively than if entirely paid drivers, schedulers and dispatchers were employed. Volunteer Wheels provides 35,000 demand-responsive advance reservation trips a year to over 2,000 different clients nationwide. The paper describes the three essential criteria for starting a Volunteer Wheels Program. There must be a parent agency or government entity willing to sponsor the program that has an unyielding commitment to volunteerism with the knowledge of good principles of volunteer recruitment and management. There must also be a sense of civic pride and community participation among the population and there must be a financial base.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transport Canada

  1000 Sherbrooke Street, West, P.O. Box 549
  Montreal, Quebec  Canada  H3A 2R3
• Authors:
  • Studebaker, Dennis E
• Conference:
  • The Fourth International Conference on Mobility and Transport for the Elderly and Disabled Persons
  • Location: Vancouver British Columbia, Canada
  • Date: 1986-7-21 to 1986-7-23
• Publication Date: 1986

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Print
• Pagination: pp 353-360
• Monograph Title: Mobility and Transport for Elderly and Disabled Persons. Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference, Vancouver, Canada, July 21-23, 1986

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Paratransit services; Persons with disabilities; Physical disabilities; Public transit; Transit operating agencies; Transit operators; Transportation disadvantaged persons; Volunteers
• Identifier Terms: Transed
• Uncontrolled Terms: Disabled passengers; Post paid tickets; Specialized transport
• Geographic Terms: Sonoma County (California)
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Safety and Human Factors; Society; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01050116
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: May 30 2007 3:05PM