Door-Through-Door Transportation

Abstract

Door-through-door transportation offers a high level of service for travelers who have significant mobility limitations. Obviously a place exists for these services in a transportation network offering a multimodal family of services, but these services are too often overlooked in standard community transportation planning efforts. Thus, they typically become the last tier of services offered in a community. Door-through-door transportation services allow frail and disabled individuals to continue living in their own homes and still stay connected to the services and activities that they need for health and happiness. Door-through-door transportation services also provide real assistance to people who act as caregivers for seniors, people with disabilities, and others in need of highly personalized transportation services. These services are extremely important to the quality of life of the riders, their caregivers, and those who provide the rides. A project sponsored by the Administration on Aging explored the concept of door-through-door transportation services with the objective of providing insights and inspirations for people and communities that might be considering the implementation of door-through-door transportation services. Case studies were used to develop a list of characteristics of door-through-door services and to identify the factors that led to successful operations. It was found that such services operated with a wide range of program characteristics and that the most successful programs appeared to be those most closely tailored to the individual needs of their communities.

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