The James L. Maher
Center Transportation Department has a fleet of over 60 vehicles
transporting over 200 persons with developmental disabilities each
year. In the course of a year
our fleet averages close to a million miles of travel and we utilize over
90,000 gallons of gasoline. Each
day our professionally trained drivers make over 5001
trips bringing people to and from work at the Galley, the War College,
N.E.T.C., N.U.S.C., and the Naval Hospital located at the Newport Naval
Facility. In addition our
department transports individuals to our workshops and the Maher Center
Laundry and Horticultural Center located on Aquidneck Avenue.
While most of the transportation resources are devoted to assuring
individuals safe transport to and from their day programs, we maintain a
significant support to both our residential and recreation programs.
We have a Staff of about 25 drivers who have commercial driver’s
licenses who are trained to work with persons with disabilities.
Some of the training we require involves how to secure wheelchairs
properly, how to handle seizures and other emergency medical concerns
while on the road and defensive driving techniques.
Each driver is issued a cell phone that has two-way radio
capabilities, allowing the driver to be in constant contact with our
dispatcher. Our transportation
facility located on Aquidneck Avenue has the capacity to garage 11
vehicles at that facility. To
appropriately service these vehicles, we employ a full-time mechanic who
is responsible for the majority of the maintenance and assuring that each
of the vehicles is mechanically safe and sound.
Our
Transportation Program operates 20 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a
year. Our mission is to
deliver safe, prompt and caring service to those individuals in the
disabilities community. The
James L. Maher Center’s Transportation Program mission has always been
to provide transportation services, to those who are disabled, in a safe
and caring manner, but about 10 years ago we expanded our mission to
provide that same commitment and dedication to a totally new group of
consumers who would be served under a new program called RIde.
The
RIde Program
The RIde program was established through the combined efforts of
three different departments of state government, in order to comply with
the federal mandate of American with Disabilities Act.
This Act required that public transportation be provided to those
individuals who had previously been omitted from the mainstream of
transportation because of a disability.
The three departments that provided coordination planning
implementation and funding to this new service were the Department of
Transportation, the Department of Elderly Affairs and the Department of
Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals.
For the past 10 years we have had a contract with the RIde program
to provide services throughout the Newport and Bristol County areas not
only to those clients we traditionally serve but also to those who are
elderly or persons with other types of disabilities not generally served
by this agency. Each day we
have over 11 Ride runs 300 trips about half of which are for persons with
developmental disabilities. Our
destinations may be to elderly day care centers, physician’s
appointments, medical facilities that provide kidney dialysis or to a
number of other destinations that fall under our contract obligations. All
RIde vehicles are equipped with wheelchair lifts, space and fasteners for
2 wheelchairs.
1A trip is considered one person being transported to one location; therefore, if you have a van with 15 passengers aboard, it is considered 15 trips.