HIRTA now at ‘sustainable level’

When the first wave of business shutdowns were announced by the governor’s office, Brooke Ramsey, the business development manager of Heart of Iowa Regional Transit Agency, distinctly remembered looking at the proclamation and thinking to herself, “Oh. We’ve got a couple hours to get all these people home.”

Several restaurants, bars and other businesses that saw heavy public traffic, including HIRTA, were forced to close up shop by noon March 17. The public transit system has provided rides to citizens in Central Iowa communities like Jasper County for about 40 years. This was a unique situation for HIRTA.

“That was challenging trying to get everybody back home,” Ramsey said, noting the difficulties also extended to the businesses that rely on HIRTA to pick up and drop off their employees. “Ultimately, we made it happen, which was great.”

Since then, HIRTA has spent the past year trying keep drivers safe and come up with “creative solutions” to navigate its way through the pandemic.

At times, this meant reserving rides for the people who needed them most.

Shortly after a pandemic was declared in Iowa, HIRTA announced it would still be providing free transportation services in its seven-county region — Jasper, Boone, Dallas, Madison, Marion, Story and Warren — for passengers with critical appointments or in need of essential services.

Most of HIRTA’s passengers during the pandemic needed transportation for essential services, like trips to the grocery store, medical appointments or a place of employment. Ramsey said a lot of the people working on the frontline still had to get to work, which is where HIRTA fit in.

However, HIRTA also experienced a huge increase in the number of missed trips. People would either call and cancel the same day or were no-shows. This happened about 5% of the time before the pandemic but then increased to 25%. Reaching out to those rides helped the organization identify this problem.

“The doctors were calling and canceling appointments and/or they were getting calls from their employer saying, ‘We’re not busy. You’re not needed today.’ So people who normally worked five days a week, a couple times during the week they weren’t working,” Ramsey said.

Missed trips can put a strain on HIRTA’s financials, too. More fuel. More payroll expensed. More wear-and-tear on the vehicles.

“When we first started seeing the trend we went back and looked and we had four drivers scheduled for the day there in Jasper County. Once you took all of the trips that weren’t being used out of the picture, we could have done the service with two of them,” Ramsey said.

HIRTA constantly informed its riders through social media, email signatures, phone greetings and other means to call ahead if they were to cancel.

Sanitization and safety become a huge priority

HIRTA is a member of the Iowa Public Transit Association, which facilitated pandemic guidance to its 35 public transit systems. Julia Castillo, executive director of HIRTA, served as the president of IPTA this year. IPTA and the Federal Transit Administration helped decide best practices for transit systems.

By this point, HIRTA sees itself in a fairly stable position. But at the beginning there were “lots of discussions” about sanitation, Ramsey recalled. HIRTA even worked with the local fire department to find out how they’re cleaning and what they’re using to sanitize the ambulances, which were then used on buses.

The products HIRTA is using keep surfaces sanitized for up to 30 days, Ramsey said. Prior to the pandemic, HIRTA, by chance, had ordered antimicrobial fabric for their bus seats, never once intending them to be installed as a response to the public health crisis. Much of the fleet has already transitioned to the material.

Drivers wear masks and temporarily have their seats incased in a soft plastic shield from floor to ceiling. This helps separate the driver from the rest of the bus. Extra face coverings are kept on board for passengers, too. Ramsey said a couple of drivers had contracted COVID-19, but it wasn’t through the buses.

“Unfortunately we’ve had several riders who have tested positive (but) they were not exposed on the bus,” Ramsey said, noting one longtime rider did die from the virus. “… That’s really tough on the drivers because they build these relationships with people. They see them every day or every couple of days. It’s tough.”

HIRTA has been lucky so far, Ramsey said. Other transit systems across the nation have been through much more difficult situations, particularly those in densely populated areas. Some drivers in areas like St. Louis or Kansas City had tested positive and died from COVID-19, Ramsey said.

“That’s never something you want to hear happen,” she said.

Finance struggles lessened by CARES Act

HIRTA did experience its fair share of struggles before the pandemic. About one week before the governor released her declaration, HIRTA experienced some fallout from its financial struggles. Changes were made to HIRTA’s long distance trips, which affected 43 people across its region.

At least four out-of-town people in Jasper County had been cut off from transportation services. Lack of Medicaid reimbursements had put HIRTA into a financial crunch for some time, which is part of the reason why the organization changed its services. However, it was not communicated to providers or families.

Some relief was found in the form of the $2 trillion economic relief package — the CARES Act — which was passed by Congress with “overwhelming, bipartisan support” and was signed into law by President Donald Trump on March 27, 2020, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

“HIRTA did receive some of that. And part of that package was you could use this money to buy supplies, you could use it to offset your lost revenue from not being able to collect fares and things of that nature,” Ramsey said, adding that HIRTA maintained its “fare free” model through mid-July, or about four months.

For now, HIRTA is at a “sustainable level,” Ramsey said. Of course fewer people are riding buses now, assumedly because of the pandemic. Prior to March, HIRTA was reporting more than 1,100 rides per day. After the governor shut down businesses, HIRTA saw an “immediate drop” to 100 rides per day.

“(That’s) across all seven counties,” Ramsey said. “So it drastically reduced our demand for service because people couldn’t go anywhere. Nothing was open. Of course, everyone was concerned and wanted to be cautious, so they were staying home.”

Since of those restrictions have been lifted, people “are doing a little bit more” but it’s nowhere near to what it was like before the pandemic was declared.

“Now we’ll have around 200 (or) 250 rides per day, but we’re still not seeing the volume that we had before, which has helped HIRTA kind of recover,” Ramsey said. “The CARES funding helped, too, because it kind of offset the loss we had of contracted revenues, which were the remaining trips with Medicaid.”

Contact Christopher Braunschweig at 641-792-3121 ext. 6560 or cbraunschweig@newtondailynews.com