It’s a wrap! What a year Easy Lift has just concluded. As any evolving organization, we reflect back on lessons learned, opportunities gained and missed, and decisions that elevated our programs to best serve the needs of this community.
This past year, we felt the impact of the Affordable Care Act; Easy Lift experienced a record 50% increase in new passengers over the previous year! Consequently, within just a few months, we experienced a significant increase in ridership requests. Easy Lift implemented upgrades such as an enhanced telephone system which limits the amount of time a passenger is on hold, and provided quarterly customer service training for the entire staff, to continue our high level of service. Easy Lift meanwhile sought funds to expand driver and key support staff hours to accommodate the significant growth in ride requests. We don’t close on weekends or holidays; we serve this community in some capacity every day of the year. While we celebrate breakthroughs in the growth and strength of Easy Lift, humbly we know that we cannot help every person that needs us each day.
Therefore, the results of the annually circulated passenger and community survey have been an indispensable resource to assess unmet transit demand. WE HEAR YOU! Loud and clear. We strive to work from a place of “Yes” first, when serving our community, and continue to play an integral role in transportation solutions, either through program delivery or by our valued consultation. We are also a nonprofit, so community support is fundamental to our ability to best serve transit needs of south Santa Barbara County.
July 1st marks the beginning of our new program year. Please continue to offer your valuable feedback, and know that our team has the tools to make this “New Year” the best yet!
Ernesto Paredes
Executive Director