In 1993 the song “I’d Do Anything for Love” charted number one in 28 countries. Harley Davidson turned 90. Schindler’s List was popular at the movies. Frank Sinatra received the Desert Palm Achievement Award from the Palm Springs International Film Festival. And a group of people from the Coachella Valley were brought together to voice concerns about transportation for older people living in their communities.
These dreamers were asked to describe the kind of transportation that could overcome the obstacles that many face with aging and the onset of serious disease.
One after another they said what was needed:
• To be picked up at their home without having to wait outside in the heat
• Transportation in the comfort and luxury of a car
• Free rides for those on a severely limited income
•The ability to make trips whenever they were needed, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, even on the spur of the moment
• An escort who would come to their home and get them, stay with them during the trip, help them at their destinations, even help them put away their groceries when they got back home
•And they wanted the ability to go to Riverside or LA or San Diego to get special medical treatments if necessary.
When the nonprofit Independent Living Partnership heard the seemingly impossible wish list, ILP’s visionary Board said “we can do that!” A few months later the Transportation Reimbursement and Information Project, “TRIP”, was born and began providing rides for low income, elderly, sick, and disabled residents of the Coachella Valley when they had no other way of getting to needed medical services, getting their groceries, going to worship or just escaping from the boredom and torture of isolation, loneliness and depression.
By the next program year, TRIP had expanded to provide service for all of Riverside County and TRIP has been operating daily now for many years! Funding for the service has been provided by Federal transportation and aging services grants and with regional sales tax revenues.
Thousands of TRIP clients have been able to see their doctors, get groceries and keep on living in their own homes because of TRIP. The service is so innovative and well managed that the operational cost for each mile of transportation provided is less than 2/3rds the operation’s cost of the county’s public transit services. Not expensive and exactly what the patients ordered!
The Independent Living Partnership (ILP) was organized in 1989 to actively advocate for the Americans with Disabilities Act and worked hard to gain support for the bill prior to its passage into law. ILP was incorporated as a 501(c)3 organization in 1991. Website address: ILPconnect.org.
Read more about TRIP at: ILPconnect.org/trip-riverside.
