Courier Times
5 bucks pays way to Bucks
ByBRIANSCHEID
BucksCounty Courier Times
A few months ago, Samia Schell started working at Brooks Pharmaceuticals in Falls, a job that would take three separate bus rides, a mile hike and about a three-hour one-way commute to get to and from her home in North Philadelphia.
Thanks to an innovative reverse commute program, Schell pays about $5 a day to ride in a van that picks her up at her door and drops her off right outside her job on Geoffrey Road less than an hour later. After her shift, the same van takes her home.
“It's so easy,” Schell said Friday. “It sure beats standing on the corner in the cold waiting for a bus.”
The program, known as Commuter Options, was started by the Philadelphia Unemployment Project almost a year ago to give inner-city residents easier access to jobs in the suburbs, where entry-level positions are more plentiful and higher paying than in Philadelphia, said John Dodds, the project's director.
“The reality is that's where the jobs in this country are,” Dodds said during a news conference in Philadelphia on Friday. “Unfortunately, [the jobs are] not in the inner city.”
David Quindlen, a facilities human resources manager at Brooks, said the program allows his business to fill entry-level positions, which pay about $9.50 an hour, with workers who have reliable transportation.
“It gives us an opportunity to tap into a labor market that we weren't able to tap into before,” Quindlen said.
The program, which started with a federal grant and only two minivans, has now grown to a pool of 20 vans.
Inner-city workers who get jobs at businesses in locations far from bus and train stations are essentially given the vans and then travel in carpools each day with other workers at the same company. The minivans, which cost about $18,000, are subsidized by federal grants, nonprofit funding and about $2,000 per van from companies whose employees use the service, Dodds said.
The Philadelphia Unemployment Project pays for fuel, insurance and vehicle maintenance.
“It's a great marriage of employers in our suburbs ... and workers in our city,” said U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-2, a Philadelphia mayoral candidate.
Fattah announced Friday that the program would be doubling this year to almost 40 vans.
“There is not a person I know that doesn't want to go to work, but we have to make sure that transportation is available,” Fattah said.
Dodds said he is seeking more employers in BucksCounty and other suburbs to take part in the program