
Alachua County could face a seven-month gap to fill for transportation-disadvantaged residents, a service that produces 10,000 to 15,000 rides annually.
As Gainesville assumes control of paratransit services within city limits, the third-party company, MV Transportation, that the county relies on for transportation disadvantaged (TD) riders will take a major financial blow. MV Transportation currently operates Gainesville paratransit services, but Gainesville aims to provide the in-house service starting in March.
Gainesville leaders said the city will provide a high level of service for nearly 50,000 annual paratransit rides that they will assume in March.
Gainesville Chief Operating Officer Andrew Persons said the city realized that removing the bulk of MV Transportation’s rides would impact the company’s service to TD riders. He said that’s why the city prepared a plan to also provide the TD ridership program if desired.
However, Persons said the city doesn’t want to commit to taking over the program until October 2026. He said the city wants to ensure the paratransit service, provided through Gainesville Regional Transit System (RTS), is fully operational and providing the required level of service before adding another program.
That leaves the operation of the county’s TD rider program in the hands of MV Transportation, that will lose the majority of its revenue. Randy Frantz, senior vice president of operations, said the company’s strategy to deal with the fallout, up to now, has been to convince the city not to take over the paratransit portion.
He said a government operation will be less efficient and that the company had reduced its budget to meet city demands, but the city is still moving forward on its own.
Frantz told the county on Tuesday that he hopes to present a budget for TD service without the paratransit component at the next county meeting, but the costs could be double or triple without the paratransit revenue.
Transportation is a numbers game, Frantz said, without large rider numbers, a lot of inefficiencies are created.
Those bigger budget numbers could start in March when paratransit is moved to city operation and last until October. If the city delays in offering TD service, or the county sticks with MV Transportation, the costs could last longer.
Another possibility is MV Transportation not being able to fill the gap between losing paratransit service and Gainesville signaling its readiness to take over the county service. If that’s the case, timing would be very important, according to Scott Koons, executive director of the North Central Florida Regional Planning Council.
Koons said the state of Florida would need to appoint someone to provide the TD service and redirect its funding to that organization. The Commission for the Transportation Disadvantaged is responsible for such actions, but it only meets four times each year. The next meeting is in December, followed by a late March meeting.
He highlighted the seriousness of the situation and said that not a lot of companies are available to provide these services or get competitive bids.
“We cannot have, and the community cannot afford, a seven-month gap in service,” Koons said. “As was pointed out, most of these trips are for medically necessary, many of them for dialysis, and we all know what happens if folks can’t get to dialysis.”
Koons said the state commission would need to act in December if MV Transportation isn’t able to continue providing TD transit service.
Frantz said while the company lacks an immediate answer, it’s working hard to find a way to keep serving its unincorporated Alachua County riders.
“We are diligently working, trying to solution means in which 15,000 trips per year for over 1000 individual riders per year in the county are not left stranded,” Frantz said. “That’s our core value; that’s what we care about.”
County Commissioner Mary Alford said she doesn’t want the county to commit to switching to Gainesville’s services without first knowing the quality. Instead, she said the county needs options and should find a different long-term plan to handle TD transportation.
County Commissioner Anna Prizzia said at Monday’s Metropolitan Transportation Planning Organization meeting that she understands the city’s reasons for making the transition, including revenue cuts from the University of Florida. But she said she hopes the city can fill the gap for the county’s riders.
“It was really, really disappointing to see those [UF’s] cuts, and it’s left us all now in a lurch, apparently,” Prizzia said to her city colleagues. “But I hope that it doesn’t then translate as a cascading effect to now we’re in the lurch, and then we just keep passing the buck along.”
Besides savings, the city of Gainesville said the switch to operating paratransit itself will save 10 filled city employee jobs and allow for hiring 20 vacant positions. The jobs would have been lost as the city downsizes RTS after the UF cuts.