UCHRA Increasing Awareness Of Transportation Services Through Grant

UCHRA’s transportation department wants to connect with under served communities to better display services available.

Fiscal Officer John Brock said the agency wants to focus on Tennessee Tech students, Hispanic communities in McMinnville and those with impairments.

“There seems to be potentially in communities like a stigma that our services might just be used for the elderly or the less fortunate,” Brock said. “What we’re really trying to do is make some inroads with the folks in our community that might not utilize our services.”

Brock said the agency will start with surveys to create a baseline on service sanctification. Brock said then, focus groups will be established within the target communities to find a way to increase usage.

“We’ll take those insights that we learn from the focus groups and try to incorporate those lessons learned into improving our service,” Brock said. “At which point, we will do another survey after the fact and see if we improved the satisfaction of our riders.”

Brock said a $50,000 grant through a national rural transit program makes the work possible. Brock said the funding will mostly be used to pay staff for the initiative.

“As far as the federal level, I do believe this may be one of the first grants the transit department specifically has applied for and won that’s been competitive at the federal level which is encouraging,” Brock said. “The development district has recently hired a RPO coordinator who has been looking into applying more at the federal level.”

Brock said the agency wants to start setting up the focus groups by the end of the year.