Lack of transportation hinders area's rural, low-income families

Grace Beahm
The Post and Courier

Cameron (left), 6, and brothers Michael, 5, and Miguel, 4, rush to the church van that's come to pick up the family for Sunday services. Nellie Boykin and her four grandchildren, who live on Wadmalaw Island, rely on friends and family to get around.

Grace Beahm
The Post and Courier

Micah Ballzigler, 9, tries out father Brian’s wheelchair after a physical therapy session at the Ballziglers’ Johns Island home.

When they were living in Portland, Ore., a few years ago, they didn't need a car. The subway was clean and efficient; it reached far into the suburbs; a police officer was posted in almost every carriage. And it was cheap: $1.50 for an all-day pass. Qualified low-income riders could get free vouchers.

But when the Ballziglers moved to the Lowcountry, getting a car was a priority. How else could they get to work from their Johns Island apartment?

Mary Ballzigler, 28, would take Brian, a 41-year-old electrician, to his job site, drop off the two boys at school, then drive to Trident Technical

College or her internship at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where she was helping conduct research in watermelon genetics.

Suddenly, the fragile routine they so carefully constructed collapsed. Brian developed health problems. Poor circulation in his right leg eventually led to a complicated amputation. They were forced to leave their apartment and move into a small, rent-free house on Bohicket Road. Brian stopped working. Mary quit her job to care for her husband. The two boys needed a lot of looking after.

Then, in August 2007, the old Subaru they bought for $700 broke down. They went four months with no reliable means of transportation.

"We missed a lot of doctor's appointments," Mary said.

The ability to get around unhindered is critical to leading productive lives. But social service providers say low-income residents of rural areas are especially susceptible to a vicious cycle that keeps many from getting ahead. Here's the formula: Employment, access to health care and basic housekeeping require reliable transportation.

On Johns and Wadmalaw islands, where commercial centers are few and far between and where two-lane roads feature fast traffic and no shoulders, a motor vehicle has been, until now, the primary way to get from Point A to Point B.

'Sea of need'

The Ballziglers are luckier than many. They were without a car for only a few months. Today, they have the use of a van, though a leaky radiator requires them to replace the lost water every day, and the ability of the vehicle to travel beyond Johns Island is questionable at best.

CARTA, the metropolitan area's public bus service, does not serve rural Johns Island, and CARTA's Tel-A-Ride pickup service for the disabled and elderly works only within a defined service area, leaving most rural residents out of the loop.

Medicaid provides a shuttle, Mary Ballzigler said, but the van has to be reserved at least a week in advance and leaves at set times in the early morning and late afternoon. That makes it inconvenient for people in need of immediate care, and a one-hour doctor's appointment can become an all-day enterprise, she said.

Deborah Harnish, social worker at Our Lady of Mercy Community Outreach on Johns Island, said Charleston County Human Services has a shuttle, too, but reservations have to be made well in advance, and the shuttle hardly satisfies the demand.

"It's a minnow in a sea of need," Harnish said.

Some Johns Island residents walk or bicycle to get where they're going, but that's dangerous on these roads, she said, and next to impossible at night. Some pay friends, neighbors of family members for a ride — say, $20 to cover gas expenses. Some use church vans when they can. Some rely on service providers and volunteers to deliver necessities, especially food, Harnish said.

Our Lady of Mercy maintains a food pantry but cannot deliver goods. The service provider relies on volunteers — from the Church of Our Savior and Stono Baptist Church, for example — to ensure groceries reach those in need, Harnish said.

Rural areas have it the worst. Several agencies and organizations have devised a number of small transportation improvements, such as extending Interstate 526, introducing limited shuttle services, and creating bike paths and more green space for walking, but these ideas come in "fits and starts," Harnish said, and they're not always implemented.

"Part of the challenge is you're chasing your tail," she said.

As for establishing regular bus service, Johns Island is caught in a Catch-22: People don't use CARTA because it doesn't go where they need to go, and CARTA doesn't go where people need to go because they don't use it, Harnish said.

CARTA used to run a single route between Charleston and Kiawah that traversed Johns Island, but the service ended more than five years ago because of a lack of ridership, according to Peter Tecklenburg, CARTA's transportation planner.

Tecklenburg said the agency has no plans to reintroduce bus service on Johns Island, but is keeping an eye on growth and need.

"Johns Island has changed a lot," especially in the last few years, he said. The agency has received several requests for a shuttle service than can transport residents from a central hub where they can park their cars to downtown Charleston and Roper-St. Francis Healthcare in West Ashley.

That could be the "logical next step" before fixed-route service is restored to Johns Island, Tecklenburg said.

Feeling the pinch

Our Lady of Mercy has offered aid to Mary and Brian Ballzigler, providing them with food and logistical support. The agency also has helped Nellie Boykin, a 58-year-old Wadmalaw Island resident who has custody of her daughter's four children. Boykin recently needed $50 to cover her electric bill.

When she has to get around, she waits for her daughter to take her (cost: $20), or her son (cost: free), or the church shuttle, or the kindness of neighbors.

Boykin has health problems, too — she's diabetic and has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder — so visits to doctors and pharmacies are a must.

For Boykin, any ride that costs money represents a significant bite out of her monthly budget. She lives on a fixed income of about $1,200 a month, including food stamps and child support. She inherited her Wadmalaw house from her parents, so she carries no mortgage. Her biggest expenses are food, utilities and miscellaneous items, such as school supplies, needed by her four grandchildren.

Boykin said she's figured out how to maximize her $20 rides by killing several birds with one stone. She'll get her daughter to take her to the grocery store, beautician and doctor's office all in one day, for example.

Stubborn mind-set

Laura Morris is a social policy expert who spent 22 years working with former U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings in Washington, D.C., before settling in Charleston to become director of the Palmetto Project's AccessNet health consortium. Morris has helped local nonprofits and service providers secure federal funding to address systemic social problems such as the lack of access to health care and the dearth of public transportation options in poor and rural communities.

She said an intrinsic dilemma prevents most public agencies from satisfactorily solving the transportation problem: Government is increasingly forced to maximize the dollars it spends, and that inevitably means limiting services and leaving some people out of the loop.

Compounding this problem is a society that is dependent on private vehicles, Morris said, and that dependence discourages public solutions that might benefit the less fortunate.

"People in this area are so oriented to own an automobile," she said. "They are reluctant to give up that convenience."

The only way this culture of ownership and convenience, a culture that excludes a significant portion of society, can be changed is through a courageous leap of faith, Morris said. Government has to change the paradigm even before the public at large signs on to the change.

Quit building new roads, increase parking fees, limit where people can drive (such as downtown or in high-pedestrian areas), impose a higher gasoline tax. And, at the same time, implement public transportation solutions that satisfy the needs of residents. These are some remedies government can implement, Morris said.

"I've got three cars," Morris said. "I would use good public transportation if it were the lesser of two evils, but I'm not going to get out of my car and walk or use public transportation unless I'm forced to."

Of course, some public transportation solutions are available in the Lowcountry and elsewhere, but many don't know they exist, Morris said. And opportunities to develop new solutions present themselves nearly every day. Take the case of the Allendale County Scooter.

COG in the wheel

The Lower Savannah Council of Governments represents six poor, rural South Carolina counties: Aiken, Allendale, Bamberg, Barnwell, Calhoun and Orangeburg.

"All but a small portion of Aiken is considered rural," said Connie Shade, assistant executive director of the Lower Savannah COG.

The situation in Allendale County is especially bleak. In all of 2003, only 18 jobs were created, Shade said. The economy is depressed and at a standstill, partly because the work force is undereducated, unhealthy and without reliable transportation.

Yet, she said, a number of government and social service agencies operate shuttles, transporting patients, the elderly and special needs populations. These shuttles go from Point A to Point B, then sit unused for most of the day. And most have lots of available space inside.

Why not sell the unused seats to commuters?

That's exactly what Shade and her colleagues decided to do, and in 2004, after a year in development, the Allendale County Scooter program was up and running. A new full-time "mobility manager" spent each day matching people with vehicles. Funding from the S.C. Department of Transportation and various foundations such as the Sisters of Charity was secured. Zones were determined, prices set. The dialysis van traveling 50 miles between Allendale and Aiken every day was loaded up.

It cost commuters about $2 to go 10 miles, Shade said. Within a month, the program was accommodating dozens of regular riders. Within a year, hundreds. Bamberg County officials called. They wanted one, too. Thus, the Bamberg Handyride program was born.

Shade said about 40 percent of Allendale riders use the service to seek medical care; 60 percent of Bamberg riders are visiting doctors. The rest hitch a ride to work or to run errands, she said. About 95 percent of those who call to arrange a ride are getting guaranteed round-trip transportation.

The program costs between $100,000 and $150,000 annually per county, Shade said. "It's not expensive, it just takes some thinking and coordination." And now the transportation providers themselves, equipped with radios, are coordinating among themselves, adding a level of efficiency to the operation, she said.

Perhaps the biggest effect of the new system is that it satisfies employers, Shade said. Workers have a reliable way to get to and from work, and a reliable work force is an essential component to a healthy economy. Good public transportation isn't merely a social service issue, she said. It's an economic development issue.

TriCounty Link

In September, the Berkeley-Dorchester Rural Transportation Authority introduced a new McClellanville-Awendaw shuttle service that carries riders as far as outer Mount Pleasant and meets up with CARTA buses at a designated juncture, according to agency Executive Director William Hutto.

"That was successful," Hutto said of the service, and it came just as a yearlong study of transportation issues on Johns Island was wrapping up.

Hutto said his agency held public meetings in Charleston, Dorchester and Berkeley counties "to assess unmet demand" for public transportation. The result? TriCounty Link, a two-route service on Johns Island, paid for with half-cent sales tax revenue, that connects shuttles to a CARTA hub at Citadel Mall, where riders can catch express buses.

The new shuttle service starts Monday and consists of the Green Route and Blue Route, each of which offers four or five trips a day. The convergence point of the two routes will be the Piggly Wiggly and Sea Island Medical Center near Main Road and Maybank Highway. Each ride costs $2.25, though service is free for a two-week introductory period.

"Once the Johns Island routes are in place, Charleston County will have more public transportation options than any other county," Hutto said.

A current Edisto Island shuttle service is expected to link up with the Johns Island service, he said. And transfers from the TriCounty Link vehicles to CARTA buses will be free.

In most cases, something is better than nothing, and it could be that the new Johns Island bus service will help people such as Mary and Brian Ballzigler reach their doctors or places of work. On remote Wadmalaw Island, though, a public bus service is unlikely and Nellie Boykin must continue to rely on friends and relatives to get from place to place.

On a recent Tuesday, she was supposed to see her doctor to refill a prescription. She was hoping she'd get a ride from her daughter, but the ride fell through and she missed her appointment. Her doctor called in the prescription to ensure Boykin didn't go without her medicine.

The solution for Boykin: "I'm thinking about going to driving school and getting my license. My beautician said she's going to help me out. 'Nellie,' she said, 'you're going to get your license!' "

Reach Adam Parker at 937-5902 or aparker@postandcourier.com.