RTC center to help Vegas seniors get around
Handicapped and elderly Regional Transportation Commission customers could soon have an easier way to get around.
A new mobility training center unveiled in Las Vegas on Friday aims to help agency’s 16,000 senior and disabled customers learn to “move more independently” throughout the community.
Officials hope that by fall 2015, Southern Nevada residents will be able to stop in at the $6.7 million center for training needed to access RTC’s paratransit lines — advanced reservation, shared-ride services offered to credentialed customers with disabilities.
The mobility center trainers also plan to provide free one-on-one or group training to help those with cognitive or physical disabilities develop the “skills and confidence” needed to travel the commission’s fixed-route lines.
RTC General Manager Tina Quigley said teaching disabled customers how to ride those lines should help bolster the bottom line.
“It offers independence to those who want to use it,” Quigley said of services to be offered at the center. “It’s a win for us as well, because every time we move a paratransit bus, it costs us about $34 per trip. … Every time they choose to ride fixed route instead, that cost is reduced.”
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., joined Quigley and nonprofit representatives from Opportunity Village for Friday’s groundbreaking, one Reid called a “very, very good thing” for Southern Nevada.
The 14,700-square-foot center, funded largely through grants from the Federal Transit Administration, will be built next to the RTC’s Sunset Maintenance Facility, 5165 W. Sunset Road in Las Vegas.
RTC’s transit Route 103-Decatur will provide service to the facility.
Contact James DeHaven at jdehaven@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3839. Find him on Twitter: @JamesDeHaven.
