Over the past year, transit agencies across the United States have begun to discover a new model for paratransit that reduces costs and improves service — American Logistics Company's (ALC) Coordinated Transportation Model. San Diego's North County Transit District (NCTD) and Northern California's Livermore Amador Valley Transit Authority (LAVTA), recently signed multi-year contracts with ALC, and are now saving millions of dollars on their ADA paratransit programs.
ALC President Craig Puckett said there's often a misconception that they are just a broker for taxi trips but what they do is aggregate community resources.
"Every driver that provides service is going through training, vetting, background checks; they have all the credentials," he said.
"Rather than one single contractor, we aggregate services, we give them opportunities to be single owner-operators or to develop their own company." And with the training and requirements for working with ALC, those operators are improving the services they provide to all organizations in the community.
For the NCTD, one of the companies that provides services was a former driver that worked with ALC to start his own business. Six years after starting out, he now has 45 employees driving vehicles that serve not only NCTD, but provide services to other community organizations, as well.
"We're giving opportunities to small businesses," Puckett said. "We're providing wealth-building opportunities to businesses."
In the case of NCTD, which issued a performance-based RFP for its Lift ADA paratransit program in mid-2010, specifically seeking innovative alternatives to the legacy model, ALC was one of five transportation service providers vying for the contract. In February 2011, ALC was awarded the contract, and NCTD is now realizing a 30 percent reduction in its cost per trip.
ALC was also one of several transportation services providers to participate in a competitive bidding process for LAVTA's Wheels Dial-a-Ride program, and was awarded the contract in April 2011. In selecting ALC, LAVTA is saving more than $5 million over the seven-year term of the contract.
ALC is demonstrating its Coordinated Transportation Model, which leverages proprietary trip optimization technology, and intelligent transportation systems (ITS) to reduce costs and improve service. In most cases ALC can reduce the cost of paratransit programs by 20 to 30 percent, regardless of the size of the transit program.
Puckett said, "The mission statement for most transit agencies is that they are there to promote quality transoprtation in their community. We help them do that; we develop and improve community-based resources."
Visit ALC in booth 2112.
