NE: Grand Island's CRANE offers rides around town six days a week

It’s a little after 10 a.m. on a weekday morning, and Doug Lechner is behind the wheel of a Ford Transit van.

“We are on the way to Virginia now,” Lechner says as he pulls out of the parking lot at 2510 S. North Road. “Virginia Lankford.”

In a few minutes, the van comes to a stop outside Lankford’s door in central Grand Island. The skies are drizzly, and the temperature is a dank 40 degrees.

“Hey, Virginia, how are you?” Lechner calls out through the open bifold doors.

“OK, and you?” she responds. The two are well-acquainted.

“I’m going to the Grand Generation Center,” Lankford tells another passenger. “I go there every day.”

It’s a typical morning for CRANE, the Central Ride Agency of Nebraska, Grand Island’s public transit system. The city contracts with Brown Transit to provide the service.

Federal funds pay for 50% of CRANE’s operating expenses, while the state and city each pay 25%. The federal government pays for 80% of capital purchases, while the state and city split the rest.

Like its avian namesake, the day starts early for CRANE.

“I get here about 5 o'clock in the morning,” Lechner said. “I hand out the tablets to the morning drivers. I check the answering service to see who has canceled.”

Drivers pick up passengers from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays.

Unlike fixed-route bus services provided in major cities, CRANE operates on a demand-response model.

“It’s curb to curb,” he said, “well, as close as we can anyway.”

Passengers need to call 24 hours in advance to schedule their ride, which can arrive an hour before the appointment time.

Asked how many riders he accommodates in a day, Lechner said, “I probably average 16 or 17.”

“I'd say that's typical,” said Transit Program Manager Charley Falmlen, the only city employee in the operation. “The entire service floats between 200 and 275 trips a day.”

Transportation for all

Who is CRANE for?

“Everyone,” she said. “It’s public transportation.”

“Well, I have to use it because I can't see and drive,” Lankford said. “I pay at least $120 a month to ride the bus.”

CRANE costs $2 per ride, anywhere within the Urbanized Area of Grand Island.

“It actually extends out beyond city limits, and there's a couple areas the city limits kind of extend that the Urbanized Area doesn't,” Falmlen said.

The Urbanized Area is determined every 10 years based on census data.

“If you would sit to the inside, Virginia,” Lechner said as Lankford boarded, “we're going to pick up another one.”

Several blocks away, he stopped the van outside Richard Rivera’s residence. Lechner got out, opened the back doors and lowered a lift for Rivera, who uses a walker.

“I'm glad they have it here,” Rivera said of CRANE once he was seated. “If it wasn’t for them, we’d be in a spot.”

Falmlen said the passengers who make up CRANE’s 60,000 to 65,000 rides per year seem satisfied with the current service.

“We finished a transit development plan in 2023. What came out of that … was just continue on with our current service as is,” she said. “Our current ridership really likes our door-to-door service, and that's something we want to maintain for the time being.”

Room for improvement?

Not everyone is a fan, however. Danielle Helzer, who owns Rooted Books and Gifts downtown, asked Mayor Roger Steele about the city’s transportation plan after his State of the City report in January.

“I don’t think our city has expanded to meet the needs of people we currently have here,” she said in an interview last week. “Our community isn’t walkable.”

Helzer said buses should run later during the week and more hours on weekends.

“Public transportation after 6 p.m. would be wonderful,” she said.

“If you could just get the service to be a little bit better,” Lankford said.

CRANE should provide “more hours and more trips,” she said, “probably every day, because we can't get anywhere when the bus is not running.”

“I can't say that the elderly use it more or the disabled,” Lechner said of CRANE’s clientele. “I think it's about the same.”

“When the city first took over public transit in 2018, it was predominantly seniors and disabled. But we did a lot to expand the service hours and to just communicate about the service,” Falmlen said. “There is a good chunk of our service day that is work-based trips. Mornings from that 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. hour are really people going to work.”

“We have a low-income population,” Helzer said, “and we have lots of shift workers that don’t have transportation.”

She said CRANE’s current schedule doesn’t work for all of them, including one of her employees who doesn’t drive.

“My store doesn’t close until 6 p.m.,” Helzer said. “The scheduling 24 hours in advance is also a barrier.”

A worker who doesn’t drive can’t fill a shift on short notice, she said.

Lankford also raised concerns about the vehicles CRANE uses.

“Some of them are just vans, and they have a ramp that pulls out for people who have walkers,” she said. “That's kind of not safe, because the people with the walkers are afraid that they're going to fall, so the people with the walkers really should ride the big buses with the lift.”

Four vehicle types

CRANE’s fleet of 15 vehicles comprises four types, the largest of which are 14-passenger Ford Senator II buses. The Ford Transit vans are designed for nine people, but some seats have been removed to accommodate two wheelchairs.

“We have a Chrysler Voyager, which is an ADA-accessible van that does have the side ramp and that seats three people in the back and one person up front,” Falmlen said.

“Then we have the two Ford Explorers, which are the very first non- ADA vehicles into our fleet,” she said. “They have a one-minute load time, as opposed to a five-minute load time.”

Falmlen said passengers can choose which kind of vehicle they want to ride.

“No, when she calls in and tells them that she can't ride on the van,” Lankford said of a friend who doesn’t like the Voyager with the pull-out ramp, “they tell her, ‘You're going to ride whatever we send.’”

“That shouldn't be happening,” said Falmlen, who suggested Lankford’s friend fill out an Americans with Disabilities Act Reasonable Accommodation Form.

When asked what she would like to see in a public transit system, Helzer said, “I think it’s definitely more than they’re doing.”

She suggested that the city collaborate with local nonprofit organizations and other cities — such as one with a fixed-route system — to improve Grand Island’s public transit.

Flex-route system

Tri-City Roadrunner, which serves all of Scotts Bluff County, offers both demand response, like CRANE, and a flex-route system.

Public Transit Manager Curtis Richter said Tri-City Roadrunner operates a Blue Route and Orange Route every 60 minutes. Customers board at designated stops along the routes.

But the buses can deviate three-fourths of a mile off the route with prior reservation to pick up or drop off someone at their home.

Tri-City Roadrunner added the flex route to its demand-response service in 2018, Richter said.

“With ridership being what it is, the service is booked well in advance, generally,” Falmlen said of CRANE’s demand-response service. “We're not at a point where we need to go out and increase ridership or anything like that.”

Lechner said he thought some people don’t ride CRANE because they don’t know it’s available, and Lankford said others don’t like the hour window in which the bus might arrive.

“They don't want to wait that long, and they don't understand why the bus just can't come right out and get them,” she said.

“It is, you know, public transit. It's not a ride hail,” Falmlen said. “People forget that, if it were a fixed-route system, they'd be waiting 15 minutes to one hour.”

Lechner said Grand Island isn’t big enough for a fixed-route system.

“I think the ridership would go down,” he said.

As the van pulled up in front of the Grand Generation Center, Lechner got out to help Rivera down with the lift, and Lankford stepped out onto the sidewalk.

“We definitely want people to be able to ride the service as they have a need,” Falmlen said. “If someone calls a day in advance, generally, they're going to get a ride.”

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