TRANSPORTATION SHOULD BE BETTER COORDINATED

Cape Girardeau countians can look forward to December and findings of a study to determine the county's public transportation needs.

It will be interesting to see what the Southeast Missouri Regional Planning and Economic Development Commission, which has been conducting the study for some time, comes up with. Perhaps it will lead to a more coordinated approach to transportation needs than is being done now with every agency and organization that provides public transportation going its own way.

The issue surfaced about a year ago after the Cape Girardeau County Commission learned that some elderly residents of Delta had trouble getting to their doctor appointments in Cape Girardeau. The commission discovered a complicated maze of agencies and organizations running buses and vans throughout the county with little or no coordination. Not all of the transportation services are being made available to the general public, because they are being operated for specific groups of people. As a result, some people who need rides can't find them.

The regional planning commission is collecting information from the transportation providers concerning the people they serve and where they run the vehicles. It is looking at such things as Kelley Transportation, which operates a private cab company and also provides transportation for Cape Girardeau city's taxi coupon system; Southeast Missouri State University, which operates a transportation system for students on campus; VIP Industries, which has a large transportation system to take employees to and from work at its sheltered workshops; and Cape County Transit, which gets both county and federal funds for urban mass transit and primarily serves senior citizens.

There is a great deal of overlap and obviously gaps in the services, as evidenced by the situation in Delta. Those are the problems that need ironed out so that everyone in need of transportation can find it.

The study is costing $34,000, with the county paying $2,000, the planning commission $5,000 and the federal government $27,000.

Those kinds of dollars should not only identify where the problems are, but provide recommended solutions as well. Those solutions, if feasible, should be implemented immediately if the county is to get its money's worth from the study and county residents in need of transportation are to be adequately served.