Purchase one additional revenue light-duty cutaway bus to add to the city of midland dial-a-ride fleet

This Federal Formula Grant award from the Federal Transit Administration (CFDA 20.507 - Federal Transit Formula Grants) provides $157,162 to the City of Midland's Dial-A-Ride division to purchase one additional light-duty cutaway bus to expand their demand response transportation fleet from 15 to 16 revenue vehicles. The grant will enable Dial-A-Ride to maintain full pre-pandemic service coverage while incorporating new electric transit vans, as well as provide flexibility to potentially increase service hours in the future. The grant award date is August 24, 2024, with a project completion date of March 31, 2028. There are no reported sub-recipient activities associated with this grant.

Purpose

The purpose of this award is to purchase one additional revenue light-duty cutaway bus to add to the city of midland dial-a-ride fleet.

Activities

Funds will be used to cover the cost to purchase one light-duty cutaway bus (30FT) to expand the dial-a-ride fleet from 15 revenue vehicles to 16 revenue vehicles.

Expected outcomes

The added flexibility of having another revenue vehicle will allow dial-a-ride to ensure that we can continue to provide all pre-pandemic demand response coverage in our service area while incorporating the use of our three new electric transit vans into rotation. In addition with the added flexibility of another bus in our fleet we will be able to consider future service expansions to our hours of operation. This will be advantageous to US as we research early morning hours of operation expansion for our weekday demand response service.

Intended beneficiaries

Dial-a-ride passengers that rely on our service will benefit from increased flexibility of our vehicle fleet ensuring uninterrupted continuation of pre-pandemic bus service as well as the possibility to increase service.