SEAT Provides Commissioners An Annual Update

MUSKINGUM COUNTY, Ohio- Finding transportation to work, medical appointment and other necessary locations throughout the community can be difficult.

The South East Area Transit (SEAT) met with Muskingum County Commissioners on Monday to provide an annual update on their Work Force Transformation Transportation Program and how it’s impacting community employers.

Howard Stewart, SEAT Transit Director, says they are transporting about 238 different employers throughout the community.

“To date, we have transported about 14,000 trips a month back and forth to work. We also talked about some of our technology that we are utilizing and how we’re serving passengers in the amount of phone calls that are one stop call center, our transit center downtown here, we’re taking roughly between 650 to 700 phone calls a day and that’s ingoing and outgoing phones calls so our customer service reps are very busy,” Stewart stated.

SEAT also provides medical trips, general public trips, dialysis transportation and more that generally start out at 4:00 a.m. up until 8:00 p.m. Monday through Friday.

“We generate 50 percent of our operating revenue from the state of Ohio, ODOT, and so we have to match that and any local help to match that 50 percent draw down helps us in our operation and that’s what we were here today reporting on what we can do and asking for the support from the County Commissioners,” Stewart said.

Due to the high call volume throughout the day, Stewart encourages the community to stay in the call in que when scheduling a ride so they don’t hang up and lose their place in line. Residents can also schedule and cancel online at seatbus.org.