Do you have trouble driving to work? A NE Iowa group wants to help.

Most people in Northeast Iowa use a car to drive to work.  But paying for a car and for gasoline and for repairs can stress the finances for some families.  And often when a car has trouble, an employee has no backup way to get to work and has to call in to miss work, possibly losing money.

A Northeast Iowa group is working to change that situation.  The "Northeast Iowa Mobility Team" is comprised of representatives from Northeast Iowa Community Action Commission, Upper Explorerland Regional Planning Commission, Winneshiek County Development and other organizations concerned about the lack of affordable public transportation that exists in Northeast Iowa.

The group started by asking for support from the Community Transit Association of America and being one of just seven areas nationally to win a planning grant from the organization.

The grant allowed the NE Iowa Mobility Team to spend the last year surveying employers and employees.  They talked to over 800 workers and discovered one in five of them had had challenges with transportation.  Making the problem worse was the fact that many of the workers did not have a back-up plan if their transportation arrangement fell through.

That lead the NE Iowa Mobility Team to begin planning a pilot project that would eventually result in workers from Calmar, Decorah, Ridgeway and Cresco being able to hop on a bus taking them to a wide range of work sites.

NEICAC's Karn Pankow says the pilot project would utilize her agency's transit vans, at least at first.  Now the group is trying to figure out how to create a transit schedule that would meet the needs of enough people to make it practical.

Members of the group have been talking with area employers about the potential service.  They want input on route times and bus-stop locations.  They also want to know whether employers would help sponsor the bus service or would sell and distribute bus passes to employees

Pankow says the transit system would benefit employers through a decrease in absenteeism; would allow them to hire people living farther away from any given work site; and would save money on payroll taxes by deducting an employee's public transit cost from gross salary amounts.

The hope is that regular bus service could be set up connection all the towns in Allamakee, Clayton, Fayette, Howard and Winneshiek counties.  But Pankow says the first step is to get employers involved in the project.  "We're pretty open to whatever makes sense," she concludes.

For more information about the public bus service pilot project, contact Karn Pankow at karn@neicac.org or Winneshiek County Development Director Randy Uhl at wcdi@thinkdecorah.com