Community Services of Starke County is announcing a fare increase for transportation beginning July 1st.
“The reason why we had to do an increase is because of the cost of gasoline,” said Director Joan Haugh. “We put this off and we’re not seeing a break. We’re already six months into this year and we’ve almost spent as much as we did last year. With that cost increasing, we felt that we had to do something so we are increasing as of July 1st. The people that we’ve already told are regular riders and they’ve been asking us for some time when we are going to be raising our rates. How can we afford not to? I think they understand but I just wanted to let the public know too that there is a slight increase.”
Haugh was asked if the transportation use is increasing.
“Last year we served 823 different people. Some of them may ride twice a week, some daily, some once a year. That was an 18% increase over the previous year.”
Mrs. Haugh told us what people use the transportation services for.
“We just did a survey and most of the trips are for medical purposes. Most of them are local, but unfortunately we have to go out of the county for some of the specialists that aren’t here. Some riders have long-time doctors that live in Valparaiso and LaPorte and they don’t want to give up that contact with that doctor so we still take them there. We take people to work, to shop, to the bank, to the barbers and beauty shops. We go wherever their need may be.”
