Changing the Means of Transportation:
Welfare-to-Work People Find Their Way to New Jobs

Aired May 25, 1999

This is INFOhio After Nine, I'm David C. Barnett, and we have entered a Tuesday morning, the 25th of May, 1999, and yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court made a controversial ruling on what has been a controversial case. It involves the drawing of lines, the lines of conduct between young people at school. What is "teasing" boys and girls, and what is sexual harassment? More significantly, who is responsible when a questionable activity takes place? The Court rules yesterday that the school is to be held liable, and that can have dramatic implications which we'll discuss with attorney George Crissy after we continue our year-long examination of welfare reform in Ohio. We call it "The Changing Face of Welfare," and one of those things that are changing are the means of transportation. Armed with a new federal grant, officials in Cuyahoga County are hoping to close an employment gap. One of the more ironic dilemmas of welfare reform is the fact that the majority of new job creation is happening away from the urban core and the people who need the employment the most.

David C. Barnett–Every morning, vans leave the headquarters of Goodwill Industries on Cleveland's east side, taking city residents to companies desperate for workers in suburban communities, such as Solon.

Rosemary Cubbington–We expect this van pool program to be a permanent part of our service mix. The kind of service we're providing in Cuyahoga County is changing.

DCB–Rosemary Cubbington is deputy manager of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority. She says RTA has spent the better part of this decade trying to get a regular van system rolling.

RC–Back in 1991, we designed a reverse commute van pool program, which we tried to put in place with the Spanish-American community, and couldn't get off the ground, so when the President signed the Welfare Reform Act, we immediately started to dust off that program and reintroduce it to the community.

DCB–Today, that RTA program provides a van and transportation advice to Goodwill Industries for the purpose of getting their trainees to those new jobs opening up in the suburbs. A $450,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation will now allow the addition of 20 more vans to this welfare-to-work mix. The grant will also fund a group of mobility managers, transit system experts who will work with people who have transportation problems.

RC–Meaning that they can't get to a job through their own means or through our current RTA service, and we'll work with those individuals to try to either get them on RTA to get out to job locations, or put them in a van pool.

DCB–Initially, these transit advisors will be stationed at county sites throughout the community. The system's first mobility manager is Erica Arnold, and she presently moves between the Southgate and Ohio City neighborhood centers. An earlier stint with the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority gave her a great deal of insight into the needs and the difficulties of those trying to move into the working world.

Erica Arnold–If they do have the transportation, if it might be by way of public transportation, they would have to walk maybe a mile-and-a-half to two miles to get to that employment site or if they didn't have to walk a mile-and-a-half they'd have to get up very early in the morning to catch two buses to transfer to that job.

DCB–Arnold's job is to work with the clients to help plot a reasonable route, or to get them in the van pool, or even to help create a new route dedicated to a previously underserved population. Agencies throughout the region have been trying to find different ways to fund job access programs in an economy where many groups are competing for fewer dollars.

Howard Mayer–This year, we had about $90 million in projects that were ready to go. We had about $30 to $35 million available, so we have essentially three times the number of projects for the available funding, so money is tight.

DCB–Howard Mayer is executive director of the Northeast Ohio Area-wide Coordinating Agency, or NOACA, the original group that distributes funds to area transportation projects. NOACA will be contributing another $830,000 to the van pool program, using dollars that are traditionally used for other things.

HM–For such projects as bridges, highways, bus replacements, that kind of thing. It's basically-it's traditionally used for hardware. What's unique about this for NOACA is that we're putting that kind of money into a program that provides direct service.

DCB–Rick Warner, an official with Cuyahoga Work and Training, the county's welfare-to-work agency, says that transportation looms large in the welfare reform planning mix.

Rick Warner–It's our belief based on surveys of welfare recipients that somewhere around 50% of them reach our office, our offices via public transportation, and so that indicates to us that probably upwards of half of our participants may not have access to private transportation, that is cars.

DCB–As Cuyahoga County travels further down the road towards welfare reform, public transit, and an advanced van pooling system, may help shrink the distance between the jobs and the job seekers. For INFOhio, I'm David C. Barnett in Cleveland.