EAST LONGMEADOW/HAMPDEN/LONGMEADOW – Last November alone, the maroon and white vans of the one-year-old Tri-Town Trolley made a total of 500 trips from homes in East Longmeadow, Hampden and Longmeadow to grocery stores, doctor’s offices and senior centers – a manifestation of East Longmeadow Council on Aging Executive Director Carolyn Brennan’s long-held belief that “Every senior deserves a right to transportation.”

It’s a goal Brennan has been pursuing since she was the Director of the Hampden Senior Center back in 1991.

“When I was in Hampden we did have a Hampden and Wilbraham [senior ride service] and the PVTA [Pioneer Valley Transit Authority] subsidized it 100 percent” Brennan told Reminder Publishing. That service, she said, ran for six years, “and then the PVTA chose to do a whole Western Massachusetts regionalization plan. Regionalization is great, but once you get that big you start to lose efficiency.”     

The increased coverage area for senior rides, coupled with Americans With Disabilities Act [ADA] mandates to provide tightly scheduled rides to disabled individuals within three-quarters of a mile from an established PVTA bus route, dramatically reduced the number and efficiency of senior rides available to elders in the area.

“Over ¾ of a mile [from a fixed route] they were doing it as a courtesy,” Brennan noted. There was also an issue with cost, both to the elders and to PVTA.

For example, she said, a non-ADA mandated ride to the senior center for lunch through the PVTA senior ride service now costs an elder as much as $3 each way. Add $3 [or more] for the lunch, and that’s $9 for one activity for someone on a fixed income. “I don’t spend that much for lunch, and my income is growing,” she said.

On the flip side, each one of those senior rides cost PVTA approximately $30 to provide – one way.

Concerned with the growing cost to PVTA of providing – and difficulty for elders in obtaining – senior transportation, in 2013, Brennan began working with the PVTA to try and bring back the senior ride trolley service for East Longmeadow and Hampden.  A member of the para-transport committee for the PVTA at the time, Brennan outlined how the regional trolley service had worked in the past, and how it could be a cost-saver for everyone. A grant funded the initial rebirth of the trolley concept.

“The trolley is in its second revival,” Brennan explained. “We brought it back in 2013 because PVTA was under huge budget constraints and we were looking for ways to bring seniors [transportation] services much less expensively,” especially in Hampden, which, because it has no established bus routes, is all senior rides, Brennan said.

The trolley service was expanded through a pilot program to include Longmeadow in September of 2018, again, Brennan said, funded initially by a grant.

 On average, a one-way ride on the Trolley costs $17 to provide, and is priced at $1 for in-town rides, $2 for out-of-town rides, for the elder, Brennan said. PVTA subsidizes the monthly cost of running the four vans and paying the five part-time drivers, which operate out of the Pleasant View Senior Center on North Main Street in East Longmeadow. Transportation appointments are scheduled between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. Monday to Friday.

“We do grocery shopping and medical appointment trips [in Springfield and other local towns], any municipal building, libraries, senior centers, town halls, physical therapy [appointments],” Brennan said. “So far the limitation is time of day.” If someone has a 3 p.m. doctor’s appointment the Tri-Town Trolley can get him or her there, but isn’t available to bring them home, she said. “We have to depend on volunteer drivers [in those cases],” she added.

The success of the Tri-Town Trolley pilot project may spawn issues of its own, however. For example, Brennan said Longmeadow had 30 trip requests per month when the Tri-Town Trolley started serving it last fall. Requests now average 90 calls per month

“Because ridership has increased, we are starting to turn people away,” Brennan said.  The Trolley is expected to get a new van this spring, but Brennan said it hasn’t yet been decided if that van will be used to replace older equipment, or put on the road. “That will be determined by what the PVTA decides it can subsidize going forward,” she said.

Currently Brennan said the PVTA subsidizes approximately $60,000 of the Trolley’s $100,000 annual operating cost. She is waiting to hear if her application for a $44,000 grant to help fund the Trolley has been accepted.” I am waiting for my grant approval and in discussion with PVTA to increase the subsidy to meet demand,” she said, adding that she has rejected suggestions that she approach the towns to help fund the service.

“People say the town should pick it up, but they are cutting services and my intent was not to burden the towns,” Brenan said. “I can’t put the burden on seniors; we are getting close to 30 percent [of seniors] in our population. I can’t expect the town to take on a program that is ultimately going to affect seniors if their taxes go up.”

Brennan said there is often a misconception that seniors living in the suburbs are well off. She said though they may own their homes, many still live on fixed incomes of $1,700 a month or less, and are struggling to pay utilities, food, medicines and taxes.