Press Releases

For Immediate Release

Forum Highlights Welfare-to-Work Transportation Projects

Rep. Lynn Woolsey Keynote Speaker

CONTACT:

Marjorie Blackwell
510.464.7884

Deidre Heitman
510.464.3272

OAKLAND, Calif., March 12, 2001...Congressman Lynn Woolsey (6th District: Marin/Sonoma) will be the keynote speaker at a forum highlighting new and improved services to ease the transportation burden of Bay Area welfare recipients and others dependent on transit. Sponsored by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the Welfare-to-Work Transportation Forum, "Making the Connection," will be held Monday, March 19, 2001 from 9 a.m. to noon, at the Lawrence D. Dahms Auditorium, 101 Eighth Street, Oakland.

Approximately 300 representatives of transportation, social service and child-care agencies, community organization leaders, and elected officials are expected to attend. Other speakers will include Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey, vice chair of MTC, and Steve Heminger, MTC executive director.

The event will feature exhibits of more than two dozen projects that are helping solve the daily transportation problems of thousands of low-income Bay Area residents. Many are participants in California's welfare-to-work program (CalWORKS) who are joining or rejoining the job market and do not own an automobile. MTC and transportation providers have been working closely for the past four years with county social service and child care agencies, community-based organizations and others to develop and implement projects to help meet their transportation needs.

The transportation projects include van services that transport children from school to after-school programs while their parents are at work; extended "owl" bus services to low-income areas for late-night shift workers; and new bus routes across the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge that directly connect low-income areas in Contra Costa County with Marin County employment centers that need entry-level workers. MTC's new LIFT (Low-Income Flexible Transportation) program has awarded a total of $5 million to these and other such projects, matched dollar-for-dollar by the local project sponsors for a total $10 million program.

The forum agenda will include a discussion of MTC's proposal to develop a "lifeline" transit network that would identify transportation services for transit-dependent and low-income residents to enable them to get to jobs, health care services, grocery stores, schools and other vital destinations. There also will be discussion of the upcoming Regional Transportation Plan that MTC is developing to guide transportation investments for the next 25 years.

Congresswoman Woolsey, a leader in Congress on issues involving children and families, will provide her perspective on the important role of transportation in the lives of working families.

MTC is the transportation planning, coordinating and financing agency for the nine-county Bay Area.

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