Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, she travels to a dialysis center in Charles City, where she has treatment. It takes four hours. She boards the bus at 7:15 a.m. and returns back to the home at 1:30 p.m.
“It’s not something I like to do, but this means my life,” Butt, 77, said of the treatments.To lose that source of transportation would “be awful,” she added.She is one of several who Region 2 Transit takes to various medical appointments, dialysis treatments, and scores of other trips.
Riders pay $3 per one-way trip. But officials worry about maintaining a level of regional transit services in the face of declining federal dollars.
Kevin Kramer, head of transit services in an eight-county North Iowa area overseen by the North Iowa Area Council on Governments said temporary funding fixes have kept the 92-bus fleet intact, but he is not certain that will continue at the current level.
He said in the past, $7 million in federal transportation dollars have financed the transit program in Iowa. Last year, in comparison, “we received $1.2 million.”
The rest was back-filled with state dollars approved by the state legislature. Read more from this article in the Mitchell County Press News....