Years of planning and a pair of pilot programs were necessary to get Ride Lake County off the ground, but once it started earlier this month there were nearly 1,000 registrants and more than 400 rides the first five days.
Ride Lake County began operation May 1 providing seniors 60 and over — as well as people with disabilities — a ride anywhere in the county they need to go for no more than $12 per round-trip on a specially equipped Pace bus.
“This is a seamless, borderless system for all of Lake County,” Lake County Board Chair Sandy Hart said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on May 6 at the offices of the Lake County Department of Transportation. “Before, it was a complicated patchwork where people had to change buses.”
Hart said the program is a partnership with Pace, the suburban bus service. Pace provides the specially equipped buses. Participants will contact the Pace call center to arrange a ride to their desired location.
“People can use it to go to the grocery store, a doctor’s appointment, church or work,” Hart said. “Fifty percent use it to get to work. It takes only one phone call to one phone number.”
Mike Klemens, the director of transportation and planning for the Lake County Division of Transportation, said the estimated cost of the project is approximately $2 million for a year, with the county’s taxpayers providing between $600,000 and $1 million. The rest comes from Pace and the federal government.
Klemens said people must first register with Pace as a participant before they can utilize the service. Once registered, they call to schedule a ride as far out as seven days in advance or as little as two hours before. The service operates between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. daily, including weekends.
Shane Schneider, the director of the Lake County Division of Transportation, said the cost of a roundtrip ride is $4 for less than five miles, $8 for between five and 10 miles and $12 for more than 10 miles. Initially there was going to be a per-mile charge, but that idea was dropped.
“We got a lot of (negative) feedback, and decided not to do that,” Schneider said. “ADA-accessible paratransit vehicles provide curb-to-curb service from the rider’s desired pickup location to their drop-off destination.”
Klemens said if a person needs a caregiver to help them get from a building to the curb, there is no charge for the caregiver to ride the bus with them.
Though Ride Lake County is a countywide service, Lake County Board member Jennifer Clark of Libertyville, the chairman of the board’s Public Works, Planning and Transportation Committee, said in some cases the service takes riders beyond the county boundaries.
Clark said in towns like Barrington, Buffalo Grove and Deerfield, which straddle Lake and Cook counties, the entire municipality is covered. So are parts of Kane and McHenry counties when Lake County’s town’s limits include them. Part of Wheeling is also included.
“This is usually done where people go to the doctor’s office,” Clark said. “A lot of people need to access the VA,” she added, referring to the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center at Naval Station Great Lakes.