The City of Washington and Washington Township have agreed to shared costs in seeking a grant for a possible expansion of a public transportation service.
The 12-month trial program would build off the township’s free-ride shuttle for seniors, extending service to riders with disabilities in a partnership with CityLink. The city and township will both contribute $50,000 in hopes of securing a matching $100,000 from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA).
“There are still certain details that still need to be worked out, but in essence it would be piggybacking a little bit off of what the township started,” said Washington planning and development director Jon Oliphant.
“The feds will pay 50% of the costs incurred towards offering some sort of an additional or better service than what you have now, and we want to fund that,” said Washington Township Supervisor Jim Bremner. “We can fund part of it from the township, but we can't possibly fund it all unless we have city help.”
The FTA’s Section 5310 grant program has more than $316,000 available to government entities through the Tri-County Regional Planning Commission to enhance transit services for seniors and individuals with disabilities.
Reema Abi-Akar, a planner with the commission, said the grant is part of a broader effort to address the Tri-County’s transit “gray area” that includes Washington.
“With this program, we hope to fill in the gaps that exist in transit in the region,” said Abi-Akar. “Some people in the Peoria area have easy access to transit and that's wonderful. But other people don't, depending on where they live. With this proposal, they are hoping to provide more transit access, and this is actually exactly what we’re hoping to get out of this call for projects to use up this funding.”
Abi-Akar said any government entity can apply for the grant money and the process is competitive. She said there’s no guarantee the Washington project will receive the grant, as proposals are chosen through a grading system.
“But I will say that I'm very excited at the prospect of it, and if it were up to me, I would fund all the projects that we receive,” she said, noting the deadline for applications is Oct. 1.
Bremner said improving access to public transportation has been one of his main goals since he first took office 1½ years ago.
“We're a community that's too small to have a full-time transit system, but we're big enough to need something,” said Bremner, adding the township's pilot program of free rides for seniors through the Morton-Washington Taxi Services has grown from providing just a few rides each month at inception early last year to 27 rides last month.
Oliphant said it’s clear there’s a need for better transit access in Washington.
“Both anecdotally as well as with some of the data that has been presented, there clearly is a gray area, not only here in Washington, but Morton was another community that was specifically identified,” said Oliphant. “Really, I think where there has been a need that's kind of been seen over a number of years has been more in the demand-response type of system, where there is a need for people to be able to get to their homes or to their workplaces — to get them from point A to point B without necessarily having to have a fixed-route that can take them to various points, but rather to get from their house to wherever it is they have a need to go on that particular day.”
Abi-Akar said the Washington proposal, if funded, could illustrate the potential for future programs to serve gray areas.
“This is, I think, the tip of the iceberg in a really good way. If this Washington transit project were to succeed, then potentially others in the region could use it as a model,” said Abi-Akar. “Things like these take a lot of effort to just get going, so you really need a stand out leader. In this case, Washington Township really started that by beginning this pilot program for seniors and now hopefully, expanding to the city and CityLink to just begin a brand new process in that area.”
