P E N I N S U L A T R A N S P O R T A S S I S T ’ S

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2016 AWARD WINNER

TRANSPORT ASSISTP E N I N S U L A

Volunteer Assisted Community Transport

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1. INTRODUCTION Peninsula Transport Assist (PTA) welcomes the Victorian Government’s Draft 30-Year Infrastructure Strategy and thanks the government for the opportunity to provide feedback. Our organisation wants to contribute to the strategy plan in the area of community or on-demand transport. We want to address the following recommendations;

1.3.1 Innovative Transport Services

6.2.1 On-demand Transport Services

2. CONTEXTPTA is an incorporated charity with DGRS and PBI endorsements, established in 2013 by a consortium of residents and community organisations working together to address transport disadvantage within the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula Region.

PTA’s major organisational partners are the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council, the Brotherhood of St. Laurence, RACV, Legacy, Bendigo Bank and Southern Coastal Villages, along with the support of 60 volunteer drivers.

Our service delivery model is based around an innovative vehicle and volunteer sharing network that pools community resources together.

We offer three services;

1. Community bus hire service and register – individuals and community organisations can hire buses directly from PTA or through our vehicle registry.

The registry works by enabling community groups to share each other’s vehicles on a cost recovery basis. Organisations can receive an income by hiring their buses to other community groups on days when they’re not being used.

PTA takes care of all the booking arrangements, provides additional accident insurance cover, invoices borrowers and pays the lending organisation a bus hire fee.

2. Volunteer ridesharing service – volunteers use their own cars to provide mobility assistance to individuals who need help getting to medical appointments, shops, educational opportunities and community services as well as to health and leisure activities.

3. Volunteer bus drivers – volunteers are available for community groups to use as bus drivers. They can drive for one off bus trips, or for regular community services.

For further information, visit www.peninsulatransportassist.org

Neil Toyne, President accepting the Inaugural Victorian Age Friendly Award 2016 from Victorian

Governor, Hon Linda Dessau AM.

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The Transport Assist model supports Victorian Infrastructure principles and guidelines;

› Getting better use from existing assets;

Encourages community groups to share vehicles and maximise their utilisation for the benefit of the whole community.

› Fosters healthy, safe and inclusive communities;

Taps into the generosity and altruism of Victorians to help people who are transport disadvantaged, particularly senior Victorians who need mobility assistance. Community, Social, Church and Sporting Groups are key to making Victoria a vibrant community, they require access to safe, responsive and affordable transport services.

› Enables community participation (equally as important as workforce participation);

Driving is a great means of getting people involved in helping their local community. It’s a well-defined role and it’s accessible to a broad group of people who share this skill. It’s easy for a person to quantify the difference a person is making, such as taking a housebound person from their home to a doctor’s appointment, library, hairdressers, or driving a busload of students on an educational excursion.

Driving takes up a significant amount of time. It attracts older men in retirement who enjoy driving and their cars. A population group that is often prone to poor health, particularly depression and social isolation. Research indicates that people who volunteer have lower mortality rates, greater functional ability, and lower rates of depression than those who do not volunteer. The research also shows that volunteering has greater health benefits to older people than to all other ages.

Volunteering for older adults provides additional physical and social activity, as well as providing individuals with a sense of purpose at a time when their social roles are changing. This is important, as research also shows that the health and well-being benefits of volunteering only start to accrue when a person does between 40 to 100 hours per year (.http://www.nationalservice.gov/pdf/07_0506_hbr.pdf). Easily achieved through volunteer driving.

› Promote responsible funding and financing;

PTA receives no State or Federal Government funding to subsidise its community transport services, it charges its passengers and community groups on a cost recovery basis. For instance, with its ride-share service it reimburses drivers at .50 c per kilometre and charges the passenger .88c with .30 c covering PTA administration costs and .8c on GST. Less than half the cost of a taxi.

Similarly, with its bus hire registry, buses are hired out to community groups at $95 per day, for buses that are from the registry, the organisation who owns the bus receives $65 to cover their standing costs. While PTA receives $30 for the booking and administration.

PTA is focused on helping community groups get better use of their existing assets. Making organisations more efficient with their transport resources for the benefit of the broader community.

› Advance climate change mitigation and adaptation;

PTA is dedicated to tackling climate change given transportation is the second largest source of carbon emissions. Through our partnership with Carbon Neutral, Australia’s leading carbon solutions provider, we aim to minimise the impact our services are having on the environment through the voluntary purchasing of carbon offsets. This helps to fund important reforestation projects, such as the Yarra Yarra Bio-Diversity Corridor, Australia’s largest biodiversity reforestation carbon sink. PTA is the only community transport service we’re aware of, to voluntarily buy carbon offsets.

Supporting youth on the Mornington Peninsula

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› Lift Productivity;

Through our partnership with RACV, PTA has developed an integrated cloud based, bus and passenger ride-share IT platform. It supports our plan to replicate the service into other municipalities, extending the service from the Peninsula, to other metropolitan Councils in Melbourne and regional Victoria. The platform was designed through the assistance of Master’s Students from the RMIT IT and Logistics Business School. Part of the design was ensuring that PTA is compliant with the Victorian Bus Safety Act.

PTA intends to offer the bus booking section of the platform to community groups, who are prepared to share their vehicles through our Transport Assist vehicle registry. The platform will be made available freely or at a low cost, enabling PTA to grow the pool of available vehicles in the registry, while also helping community groups more efficiently manage their bus fleet and their compliance requirements with the Victorian Bus Safety Act.

We’re also developing an e-Learning Platform for our volunteer drivers, keeping drivers safe on the roads while giving them the skills to provide mobility support to passengers with disabilities. eLearning volunteer modules will cover - bus and vehicle safety, manual handling, supporting passengers living with dementia, low vision and mental illness. These modules are being developed with the assistance from Monash University, Department of Occupational Therapy.

This is in addition to our existing volunteer recruitment processes which require people to have a full driver’s licence, a police check, a medical clearance from their doctor, undertake a driving assessment from an independent driving instructor, and if they are driving their own vehicle the person must have comprehensive vehicle insurance and have their vehicle regularly serviced.

PTA is in the process of pursuing initiatives with Local Councils in municipalities where transport disadvantage has been identified as a major problem, particularly in communities where there are low levels of public transport infrastructure and ageing populations. PTA particularly aims to focus its efforts in Melbourne’s growth corridor councils.

PTA wants to partner with local communities to get the best outcomes for local residents. PTA intends to use a social enterprise and collective impact approach as part of its growth strategy. Using the Transport Assist brand, the organisation aims to establish a Casey Transport Assist, a Cardinia Transport Assist and a Whittlesea Transport Assist in the next two to three years.

3. CASE STUDIES

Supporting disadvantaged youth - For example, Bob a volunteer, drives a mini bus for CHAMPS, a program that supports children who have a parent with a mental illness. Bob found it extremely rewarding: “I saw a difference in the children from the start of the program to the finish. In the beginning they were very withdrawn. By the end of the program these kids were happy. They even adapted the ‘Bob the Builder’ song to ‘Bob the Bus driver’! ”

Another example is that PTA volunteer drivers transport Bella, a 14 year old blind student, from Mt Martha to Keysborough so that she can catch the school bus to the Insight Education for the Vision Impaired campus in Berwick. This service is provided 5 days a week both for morning and afternoon runs. The principal Tim Hemphill said that ‘This is the first time that Bella has attended school full time and she is flourishing”

Providing mobility support to senior Victorians

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Lisa was struggling to find transport for her dad Bill, 67 years of age who was undergoing five weeks’ worth of chemotherapy. He was two weeks into a five week chemotherapy treatment plan which required Bill to go most days to and from Peninsula Private Hospital and the Frankston Rehab Centre. Given the treatment required, Bill was too unwell to drive himself there and the family didn’t want to send him in by taxi.

As Lisa says “We couldn’t use taxis as we needed someone to take dad to the Chemotherapy suite. He was just too frail. I am working as a teacher and the treatment times for Dad are different each day. I just couldn’t take him and it was also too difficult for my family and friends to help out. I didn’t know what to do.”

PTA arranged two volunteer drivers, Bob and Bruce to take Bill to chemo. As Lisa says, “It was peace of mind, knowing that there was someone there who could help my Dad, it made such a difference. They were very reliable and Bill enjoyed the company of the men at this difficult time. It was a life saver”

4. OUR PERFORMANCE 2015/16

Peninsula Transport Assist - Quantitative Data for financial Year 2015/16

PTA ConnectU1

Number of volunteers (average) 60 16

Kilometres Travelled 81,400 Not Disclosed

Total trips 2,406 1,974 2

Mean trip length (km) 34 Not Disclosed

Number of active clients (average) 512 59

Average hours per trip (includes driver wait times) 2.75 Not Disclosed

Benefit Cost Ratio 3.30:1 2.81:1

Estimated Net Benefits Per Annum (Range)$166,730 to

$213,414$159,286 to

$203,880

Total Per Annum Benefits Assuming 10,000 trips per annum $691,972 $452,000

Notes: 1 Wines, Graeme, Graham, Mary, Scarborough, Helen, Stanley, Janet and Wallis, Anne 2014, ConnectU Social Enterprise: Final Research Monograph, Horizon 21, Warnambool.

2 Values taken at the 12 month high point from January 2014.

Although a direct comparison with ConnectU is difficult as we are yet to investigate qualitative measures in detail. There are few on-demand transport services to which we could compare, and although ConnectU appears to concentrate on the aged sector (70 - 89)1 which Peninsula Transport Assist does not (at this stage*) - the comparison is notwithstanding these limitations, valuable.

* PTA is available to ALL transport disadvantaged residents

Supporting Victoria’s faith communities

Providing medical transport

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5. RECOMMENDATIONS TO INFRASTRUCTURE VICTORIA

1. With population changes and with more elderly Victorians, especially with chronic illnesses, there will be a need for additional funding of community transport services, especially motorised vehicle services that provide passengers with mobility assistance to and from their destination.

2. Support community transport services that use community development strategies in their service delivery that can rally local communities, local people, local businesses to invest in creating transport solutions for vulnerable and disadvantaged people.

3. Ensure all future on-demand community transport services include sustainable resource sharing of vehicles as part of their model

4. Provide seed funding to community transport models where their operational costs are primarily funded through cost recovery.

Peninsula Transport Assist is a volunteer led, grass roots, not for profit