Combating isolation one ride at a time: Metro Share helps Kalamazoo seniors stay connected

Editor’s Note: This series focuses on the many impacts of Kalamazoo County public transportation. It was made possible by support from Kalamazoo Metro Transit. All photos were taken by Al Jones.

KALAMAZOO, MI — The children are grown and have moved out of the house. Mom and dad are not nearly as active as they were in their 30s and 40s. They see fewer friends and family members. So they can become isolated.

Kimberly Middleton says the fitness sessions, wellness coaching, life-long learning classes, special events, and other activities at the Portage Zhang Senior Center are intended to combat that.

“We’re a center for active aging,” says Middleton, who is deputy director of the senior center. “We offer everything from fitness classes, to health and wellness, to meals and presentations, education, arts, culture, special interest groups, and special events.”

But getting seniors to and from those programs and events can sometimes be a problem. The lack of adequate transportation is one of the biggest problems for seniors, she says.

So public transportation, in the form of Metro Share, a no-cost van-lending service of Metro Transit of Kalamazoo, has been a big help, she says. 

“We primarily use their vans for getting people to and from the senior center,” Middleton says. “We’re limited to transporting people who live within the City of Portage. And on Wednesdays, we do take seniors to Meijer, the grocery store, if they need to go there.”

Vivian Dobbins, manager of On-Demand Services for Metro Transit, says, “Metro Share is a program where we allow nonprofit agencies and governmental agencies that provide services for individuals with disabilities and seniors to share our vans.”

Metro Share makes any of its nine Ford Transit Vans available. Outfitted for seated passengers, each vehicle can accommodate nine passengers and the driver. Outfitted to transport individuals in wheelchairs, each van can manage up to two wheelchairs, up to three ambulatory passengers, and the driver.

Program participants include the Kalamazoo Regional Educational Service Agency, MRC Industries, The Shepherd Center of Greater Kalamazoo, the Ecumenical Senior Center of Kalamazoo, various churches .and the Portage Zhang Senior Center. While the program now has reservations scheduled by 60 different organizations, Dobbins says it can serve more organizations.

“There’s capacity,” Dobbins says. “Most users, they’re not coming in at 8 in the morning and running the vans until 5 p.m. Usually, folks take the vans and, because we have such availability, they’ll take one out all day. But with organizations like the Portage Zhang Center, most of their drivers are back by noon. And so I’ve been able to double-book vans.”

When a van is returned by midday, it can be made available to another organization that afternoon. 

The service — including gasoline used by the organizations — is free. And vans can be scheduled on any day of the year. “They’re available even when Metro (standard bus service) is closed,” Dobbins says. Drivers must be provided by each organization. They must be at least 21 years of age and have been a licensed driver for at least two years. They work on a voluntary basis and must undergo training at Metro Transit to learn how to properly secure passengers and operate the vans. 

Middleton says the biggest challenge her organization faces with Metro Share is not being able to fully utilize it because it needs more volunteer drivers. She says it’s a great program, but the senior center presently has designated drivers only for Wednesdays and Fridays. “We could use the service five days a week if we had the volunteers to actually do it,” she says.

Metro Share is a 30-year-old service, but use of it dropped off when the COVID 19 pandemic struck in early 2020.

“I do think a lot of people don’t know about it,” Dobbins says. “I think it was pretty popular before COVID. And then COVID hit, and I think people kind of forgot about it.”

She hopes for that to change as more people use the senior center. The 49-year-old nonprofit community agency relocated in May of 2022 to a newly-built location at 203 E. Centre Ave. Since then, participation has grown from an average of about 1,400 regular users to about 5,500 last year, Middleton says.

The Kalamazoo County Transportation Authority, which works with Metro Transit to provide fixed-route bus service throughout Kalamazoo County as well as on-demand services, is requesting an increase in its soon-to-expire millage. If approved by area voters in countywide balloting on Aug. 4, the expiring rate of 0.31 mills would be replaced by a rate of 0.36 mills. It is to be levied over seven years, beginning in 2027.  

A mill is a tax of $1 on every $1,000 of taxable property value. The increase equates to a tax of about $36 per year for the owner of a house with a market value of $200,000. The increase would be expected to raise $4.6 million in its first year, according to information provided by the transportation authority.

As part of Metro Transit’s $26 million overall budget, it will be expected to help support improvements in various programs, including Metro Share and Metro Connect. The latter is a countywide service that lets area residents schedule a ride to any place in the county. It is a door-to-door service that uses vans to pick up passengers at their homes.

If the millage increase is not approved? “It could mean we won’t be able to do some of the changes that could make the service even better,” Dobbins says. “It’s an opportunity for us to make the system, as a whole, better — more user-friendly. There’s always room for improvement. And so without extra funds, it’s kind of hard to make those improvements.”

Sean McBride, executive director of Metro Transit of Kalamazoo, says Metro Share and Metro Connect are two long-standing programs that serve any of the estimated 25 percent of the community that does not have reliable transportation to get to work, school, medical appointments, shopping, or social events.

He says millages are used to help leverage additional funding from state and federal sources, and they represent about 40 percent of Metro Transit’s overall revenue. 

“The real benefit of these programs is that they are countywide and any individual in the county can go anywhere in the county,” McBride says. “It (Metro Share) has a real targeted focus and does a real effective job of serving our senior citizen community as well as individuals with disabilities.”

Speaking of the Portage Zhang Senior Center, Middleton says,  “We exist because when older adults, as they go through life, they stop working, and the kids grow up, and all the things (they do) start slowing down. The more they slow down, the unhealthier they become. And sometimes they have a tendency to socially isolate themselves because they don’t have transportation or because they don’t know where to go, or they don’t want to walk into a senior center and not know anybody.”

Would life be different if Metro Share were not available to seniors? She says, “It might not be different for us. But it might be different for people who rely on that service to get here throughout the week, or to get to the grocery store.”

She says, “Transportation is among the top three challenges for older adults — not only in Kalamazoo County, but in surrounding counties and beyond. I should say affordable transportation, because many of them either can’t drive because they can’t afford a car and all the expenses that go along with it, or maybe they just don’t have the physical ability to drive any more due to eyesight or general health issues.”

Metro Transit, she says, is a pleasure to work with, “and we appreciate Kalamazoo Metro.”