Managing a sustained period of growth in paratransit demand is challenging and costly. But for GRTC, delivering stellar service through enterprise mobility technology is an everyday occurrence.

GRTC is the public transit provider for the City of Richmond, Chesterfield, and Henrico Counties in Central Virginia. In 2019, GRTC’s 194 fixed-route buses, in combination with its 96-vehicle CARE paratransit fleet and additional CARE On-Demand service, provided more than 9.2 million rides throughout a 227 square-mile service area encompassing a population of almost 450,000 residents.

GRTC’s mission is to “provide clean, safe, and reliable transportation, and improve mobility, and access throughout Central Virginia,” a mission it has pursued relentlessly since its establishment
in 1973. But in a region which has experienced steady and sometimes rapid growth and evolving paratransit needs, delivering on this mission has required a great deal of organizational flexibility, innovation, and scaling.

For many years, GRTC’s Care program operated as a traditional, contracted ADA paratransit service. The agency provided a fleet of cutaway vans which used a service provider to supply personnel, tools, training, and management. This model worked well enough, but in the mid-2010s, rapid growth in the Greater Richmond region triggered increasing demand for safe and reliable paratransit. This meant an immediate need for a larger fleet and workforce to manage the service.

Between 2012 and 2016, the agency’s operating budget grew by more than 2.1 million. At the same time, paratransit ridership grew by approximately 114,000 rides. GRTC’s paratransit provider’s personnel, fleet, and facilities were strained by increasing ridership and operating expenses. Simply put, more growth would require more vehicles and more people—in other words, an expansion of an already costly service.

Barham knew about the benefits of on-demand paratransit from his time at the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA). Tim envisioned adopting a similar on-demand mobility model utilizing taxicabs, wheelchair accessible vehicles (WAV), and/or Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) to reduce pressure on the agency’s constrained and high-cost paratransit program.

“We needed a provider who could meet the training and operational requirements necessary to provide the higher levels of service our riders were looking for,” stated Barham. “Introducing the wrong on-demand service could add significant risks to program goals of successfully managing sharp increases in ridership and adding new positive options to meet the needs of the paratransit community.”