Commissioners Receive SEAT Update

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – South East Area Transit’s Transit Director Howard Stewart met with the Muskingum County Commissioners this morning to apprise them of the scope of services the agency provides area residents.

SEAT is a governmental public transportation entity that runs on a $9.4 Million dollar budget with $10,000 dollars from the county, which allows it to meet the government’s local matching fund requirements. 

“We have several different types of services we do,” Stewart said. “We do Street Route, which Street Route runs north and south. To date we’ve done about 62,000 trips and it’s completely free for individuals to get transportation. There we have Demand Response, where you can call in and schedule. That’s the bulk of our transportation. We’ve done about 158,000 trips to date, through November now. So yeah, we’re out here. We have a fleet of vehicles. We have independent contractors that we contract with that provide that transportation. So yeah, we stay busy.” 

Stewart said SEAT has a 99.6 percent on-time performance rating and handles more than 800 calls per-day. He also noted that Delaware County is studying them to find ways to improve their transit operations.

“Yeah, our top transportation is medical transportation,” Stewart said. “It is a dire need here in the counties that we serve. The other is work transportation. We have a program called WTTP and getting people to work, specifically right now with the economy and prices with different things and people trying to make a living, it’s very important. And also getting people to work is a return on investment in the county.”

For more information about SEAT and all the transportation options they have available you can visit their website.