> Who are we?
> What do we do?
> How we came about?
> Aims of Flexibus:
> Objectives of Flexibus:
Who are we?
Flexibus - Meath Accessible Transport Project, is the Community
Transport group operating in the Meath area. We are a
limited company, run by a voluntary board. The company
is funded under the National Development Plan through the Rural
Transport Initiative. The Rural Transport Initiative is
the response by the Government to the shortfall in available public
transport in rural areas. This includes:
- People who live off the main transport routes
- Young people who have no access to public transport
- People with disabilities who need accessible transport
- Community groups with limited funding and transport needs
- People in rural areas with limited access to health care services
The initiative is in operation for the last four years and is funded
by the Department of Transport. There are 34 groups in
Ireland, with Flexibus being the group that operates in Meath.
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What do we do?
Flexibus run lots of services on a daily, weekly, fortnightly and monthly
basis. These services operate between different parts of the
County and beyond (see routes). Everybody can use community
transport. For example:
- Older people
- Young people
- Parents with children
- People with disabilities
- Community groups
We provide these services using our fleet of six buses. The
fleet consists of an 18 seat bus, 16 seat bus, 15 seat bus, 14 seat bus,
13 seat bus and an 8 seat bus. All of our buses are fully
accessible and are subject to rigorous safety checks. Each
seat has a seat belt and we use the most modern type of wheelchair
restraints. We also use private operators in various parts of
the county in order to increase capacity. All of these operators
are subject to the same checks as our own buses, and must meet our safety
standards before commencing work for us. The services available
to the community are:
- Weekly services to access pension and shopping facilities
- Weekly services to access hospital and health facilities
- Services to access active retirement groups
- Services for groups to attend activities
- Cinema services in rural areas
- Daily services to access education, employment and training
- Monthly services to Blanchardstown and Dundrum
- Services for Disability groups
- Individual services to access health appointments
All of our services are operated by fully trained drivers, trained to a highly
recognized standard. On services which require passenger assistants,
our passenger assistants are fully trained to a high standard, in areas such as
First Aid, Manual Handling and care and supervision of passengers with
disabilities. Other advantages to using Flexibus are:
- We accept Free Travel Pass on regular services
- We pick up door to door on request
- If a regular service is needed in your area we will provide one
- We will plan our service to suit you or your community
- We welcome new passengers
- We appreciate feedback
- Our vehicles are fully accessible
- We have rigorous safety checks
- Every seat has a seat belt
Services - To the end of 2005 Flexibus had:
21 scheduled regular public services
These services are timetabled
services open to any member of the public and can accept Free Travel
Pass. They include daily commuter trips, weekly shopping, health and
pension services, twice monthly shopping services and monthly health
services.
18 scheduled Dial-a-Ride services
A Dial-a-Ride service is a public service, which
makes available a vehicle for transport if a passenger or group has a transport
need that cannot be catered for elsewhere. The Dial-a-Ride service
operates on bookings only.
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How we came about?
Meath Accessible Transport Project was set up in March 1999, as one of two pilot
projects set up by the Department of Justice Equality and Law Reform. Its
purpose was to engage in community action planning of accessible transport, as
envisaged by the Commission of the Status of People with Disabilities. While
the focus of the initial period of activity was on physical accessibility and on
disabled people, many of the issues identified involved wider community transport
issues. In conjunction with this funding they made a successful application
for funding under Social Economy Programme to set up a Social Economy
Scheme. The Company Meath Accessible Transport Project Ltd., Flexibus was
formed in June 2002.
The project, after extensive needs analysis, started public services using two types
of service provision:
- Use of downtime on vehicles with private providers.
- Purchasing a vehicle and using this vehicle to fill in for
services not covered by private providers
This ‘bottom up’ approach has been successful in delivering public accessible transport
services in Co. Meath. Passenger trips continue to grow as the project develops
and research is continuing to deliver services to all parts of County Meath.
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Aims of Flexibus:
- To develop a community based transport model in County Meath
- To co-ordinate transport provision in County Meath to meet
the needs of the most marginalised and promote social inclusion.
- To offer a service to anyone with a transport need in the county
- To be the first point of contact for any-one-individual or
organisation/agency with a transport need in County Meath and adjoining
hinterland regions
- To successfully co-ordinate a county wide partnership of
- Public, private and not-for–profit providers,
- Local/community and county based organisations, and
- Agencies, organisations and individuals
concerned with accessible transport provision
- To implement that business plan and transport development strategy
of the board
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Objectives of Flexibus:
- Establish flexible routes and services based on needs of the communities
- Encourage private operators to participate in partnership with the Flexibus
transport project
- Pilot a community bus scheme utilising current community
bus infrastructure in a vehicle brokerage type system
- Encourage private operators to adapt their buses with wheelchair lifts
- Integration with Health Board Services
- Advocate the strengthening of conventional services by encouraging Bus Éireann
to strengthen their routes through the area
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