CHARDON, Ohio — On a Tuesday morning, Bill Loveland gets picked up from his home in Middlefield and dropped off at his job in Chardon. For 48 years, he’s been greeting customers with a smile at the McDonald’s on Water Street.
“The people I work with, they’re like second family,” he said, sharing that the people he serves and works alongside are his favorite part of the job.
Loveland explains that when his dad was still around, he would drive him to work. Now, he relies on Geauga Transit’s Wheels to Work transit program.
“It’s a load off my mind, not having to worry about how I’m going to get here or back home,” he said.
The program, which launched on Oct. 18, uses buses to help transport members of the Amish community as well as people who are transit-dependent to jobs in the area. In roughly the month after launching, the program provided 268 trips.
Laketran CEO Ben Capelle said that this program specializes in providing an easier path for people to get to work. Capelle explained that Laketran operates Geauga Transit under contract to the Geauga County Commissioners.
“So [riders] have to make fewer phone calls to call, and there's a lot of targeting of the Amish population,” Capelle said. “About 50% of [Geauga Transit’s] ridership is Amish, but there are still a lot of gaps in transportation for Amish in Geauga County. And so this program, while it's available to everybody, it has some specific parts of it targeted at the Amish community to really improve their access to work on a daily basis.”
Riders can call and schedule a trip for door-to-door service from home to work, like Loveland does. The portion of the program that specifically targets the Amish population will send a bus to a central pickup point where multiple people can get on, then will take them to the same or a few different workplaces. In both cases, riders don’t have to call every day to schedule rides, creating a more convenient process.
According to Laketran, the program features two daily routes connecting Middlefield and Chardon, plus a SR-422 route for Parkman and Auburn residents with jobs in Bainbridge and Chagrin Falls.
“Especially the Amish community, there's a lot of folks that, you know, they all need transportation to work generally. And so having this program has really helped a lot of them be at work more regularly,” Capelle said. “It's also made the transit system more efficient because there's not a bunch of phone calls going around, and all the people just get on the bus at the same time.”
Capelle said they’ve had more demand for the program than anticipated, and are working to find ways to ramp it up. A round-trip ride for seniors or people with disabilities costs $6, and $12 for everyone else.
For Loveland, it’s a daily $6 well spent.
“If I didn’t have a ride, I would've had to retire before I’m ready to,” Loveland explained. “And the customers would miss me dearly, and the employees would miss me dearly because they'd have to do extra work.”
For more information on the program or how to request a ride with Geauga Transit, CLICK HERE.