Advocacy & Education

We write articles and speak publicly about the transportation barriers facing older adults and people with disabilities in Buncombe County.

Featured Public Comment

RIDE: Promises vs. Reality

In this public comment to the Buncombe County Commissioners, Better Together Transportation highlights a 44% decline in RIDE voucher use, a shrinking transportation provider network, and concerns about wheelchair-accessible service. We urge the County to compare RIDE with alternatives based on how many rides they actually deliver.

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Good Evening Commissioners,

I’m Gino Perez, director of Better Together Transportation.

Last month, we drove a mother and her daughter. The mother has dementia and travels in a wheelchair. The daughter is her caregiver.

County staff told the daughter to buy RIDE vouchers. The County lists four companies that accept them.

We called all four.

One is a tour company. It charges sixty dollars an hour.

One is a limousine service. The County lists it as one of two companies that can carry the mother. It told us it no longer has a wheelchair van.

That is the list the County gave this family.

We requested the County’s year-end reports on RIDE. In fiscal year 2024, riders used about 10,600 vouchers. By 2026, voucher use had fallen 44 percent, to about 5,900.

That same year, the County reported capacity for more than 14,000 vouchers. Riders used less than half.

The provider list also shrank from seven companies to four.

You can authorize more vouchers. You can update the provider list. Neither one hires a driver.

RIDE is a paper answer to a real need. It lets the County sell a promise without putting a van behind it.

How many rides does this program actually deliver?

Before you fund RIDE again, direct staff to bring you an alternative. Put it beside RIDE. Compare the rides each would deliver.

The County cannot keep funding a promise and calling it transportation.

Thank you.

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