Beebe donation propels senior ride service

With a $10,000 donation from Beebe Healthcare, a local transportation network has settled into its role as a senior citizen transportation service.

“We recognize how important it is to get people to their doctor appointments,” said Beebe Healthcare President Jeff Fried, who presented a check May 22 to Independent Transportation Network/SouthernDelaware.

Fried added that the $10,000 donation can be used for more than driving people to Beebe-affiliated appointments. The nonprofit company is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to drive people to medical appointments, social events or shopping trips, said Executive Director Janis P. Hanwell.

“We take people to church, take them to get their hair done, to lunch with friends, anywhere they want to go,” she said.

ITN/Southern Delaware began offering rides to area seniors in December 2015. They now have more than 55 volunteer drivers, who use their own vehicles to transport ITN members. A membership costs $40 a year – $70 a household – and members are charged for each ride. Membership is open to people 55 or older or who are visually impaired.

There is a $2.50 pickup fee, and riders pay $1.25 per mile or an hourly rate of $20 for medical appointments over 25 miles. The average fee per ride is $11. Money is put in a transportation account so that no money exchanges hands, Hanwell said.

Hanwell said volunteers earn credits for every mile they drive. With their earned credits, volunteers can use the credits for their own transportation, save them for the future or gift the credits to others. “We have drivers who do all those things,” Hanwell said.

“We call it transportation social security,” said Katherine Freund, founder of ITN/America, parent company of the southern Delaware group.

Freund joined Hanwell, ITN/Southern Delaware founder Nancy Feichtl and board members during the Beebe check presentation.

Freund said she is impressed with the wide area of service ITN/Southern Delaware provides.

Hanwell said drivers take members to appointments in Dover and also across state lines to Salisbury, Ocean City and Berlin, Md. They are not constricted to state boundaries the way state-run transportation is, she said.

“It's ridiculous that a person's life should be dictated by political boundaries,” Freund said, referring to state-run transportation programs that only operate within state boundaries.

She applauded ITN/Southern Delaware for providing transportation across state lines. “It's such a barrier for some, and you've just casually done it,” she said.

“We're not bound by livery laws because we're nonprofit,” Feichtl said.

ITN/Southern Delaware is one of 15 affiliates across the country. A third of them are clustered along the eastern seaboard in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Connecticut. Affliates also offer services in Orlando and Sarasota, Fla.; Memphis, Tenn.; and Monterey, Calif.

Members have access to transportation in areas that provide ITN services.

For more information about ITN/Southern Delaware, go to itnsoutherndelaware.org or call 302-448-8486.