The Southwest Region Planning Commission held a meeting last week in Peterborough as part of its Long Range Transportation Plan, “Southwest Connects,” to gather input from regional stakeholders about transportation needs in the region.
Owen Houghton, a former Dean at Franklin Pierce College who attended the meeting, drives for the Community Volunteer Transportation Company. He said what he likes about driving is the ability he has to connect with people on a personal level and to learn about the problems his riders face.
“When you drive with someone you’re in an intimate relationship,” he said. “Sitting in the car for an hour or more sometimes people are very forthcoming about what it’s like in their life, and I pick up a lot of information about their needs while having a chance to inform them about services.”
On top of driving for CVTC, Houghton was instrumental in setting up a service link organization, a program of the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services that contracts with local agencies around the state to help individuals access and make connections to long term services and supports. He also volunteers for the Monadnock at Home Program, a non-profit membership group serving the towns east of Mount Monadnock.
Houghton said 45% to 50% of service needs with the Monadnock at Home program are for transportation needs.
From what he saw at the meeting, he said he likes the idea of an east to west bus route connecting Keene and Peterborough.
“That would help a lot. And I like the possibility of coordination between between agencies that oversee that bus route and CVTC in order to get people to their bus route,” he said, adding that 10 years ago the bus route proposals “bombed because people didn’t want to walk three blocks – or couldn’t walk three blocks – to get to those routes.”
He hopes using the CVTC model of “curb to curb” transportation – or micro transportation resembling Uber and Lyft models – will allow people to reach their bus stops when they are unable to walk because of disabilities or in winter months when roads and sidewalks present potential hazards.
Potentially, 9 out of 10 dollars would be subsidized through federal and or state money, according to the plan presented on Wednesday night.
VIA Transportation, a global public transport, logistics, and Transit Tech company headquartered in New York City, facilitated the meeting which included a number of slides containing proposed routes.
J.B. Mack, principal planner at Southwest Region Planning Commission said there is a movement across the country to create coordinated transportation systems and that working with stakeholders in a particular region is key. In the Monadnock Region, those stake holders include various businesses and municipalities.
“These proposals will be much more cost effective if we’re all sharing,” he said. “What if we could leverage all the groups we talked about today.”
Houghton remains hopeful this latest planning process will yield a long-needed public transportation system in the region.
“Sometimes people are so grateful they want to tip you,” said Houghton. “I have to say, ‘no, no, no. We’re doing this out of the kindness of our hearts in some ways.’ ”
Houghton said drivers for CVTC use their own vehicles, liability insurance and pay for gas.
“I spend my time as a professional volunteer,” he added, with a laugh. “It seems like we’ve been talking about this for years and years. It has been discussed as long as we’ve been talking about transportation needs in the region. It’s an ongoing problem. Especially in rural areas.”
The latest planning meeting in Peterborough is part of Southwest Region Planning Commission’s series of eight sub-regional “corridor” meetings throughout the 34-town region. A virtual meeting was held at 6 p.m. on June 25. For more information visit swrpc.org.