KAT Transports 100,000th Trip

From Voluntary Action Center

In 2010 after almost a decade of planning, Kendall County partnered with the Voluntary Action Center (VAC) to operate the new community transportation service, Kendall Area Transit (KAT). Less than five years later, VAC has provided the 100,000th KAT trip!

KAT officially began service as the first ever county-wide community and public transit program in March 2010 after community leaders identified that accessible community and public transportation for seniors and persons with disabilities was a serious unmet need.

In 2010 – KAT’s first year of operation – 4,755 rides were provided, averaging 24 trips per day. Within a year service had more than doubled and continued to increase substantially as word spread about the new service. Today, VAC provides 150 KAT trips a day and is projected to provide over 38,000 trips in 2014.

Jeff Wilkins, Kendall County Administrator, who had been working on the KAT project since his arrival in 2002, said the growth has been significant, and Kendall County residents have been well served.

“It took 845 days for the KAT program to reach its first 50,000 trips. It only took 317 for KAT to reach another 50,000 trips for 100,000,“ Wilkins said. “So, you can see the way the community has taken to the program is remarkable.”

Today KAT is a model for coordinated community transportation with many factors contributing to its success.

Community transportation is a flexible and accessible kind of public transportation that emphasizes services to the transit dependent (senior citizens, persons with disabilities, children, working persons without access to an automobile, and persons unable to be licensed to operate a vehicle).