All 29 of the vans and buses at the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission’s auction Friday were sold, with proceeds totaling more than $70,000.
That money will be plowed back into NIRPC’s transportation fund and will most likely be used to purchase new buses for local transit agencies.
Nineteen of the buses were previously leased to the Northwest Indiana Community Action Corp., which operated a dial-a-ride service in northern Lake County, with the rest previously leased to Opportunity Enterprises in Porter County and TransAction.
NWICA shut down its transportation services last month, so Friday’s sale represented a kind of point-of-no-return for the service, which served many elderly and disabled citizens. Last year NWICA provided almost 70,000 rides in Lake County.
“I feel like I’m at a wake,” said Teresa Torres, executive director of Everybody Counts, an advocacy group for the disabled community. “I went out and walked around (the buses) just to pay my respects.”
Renee Ramon-Doughman and her husband, Shannon Doughman, were hoping to snap up one of the buses for their service organization AccessAbilities. They run a day program for young adults with developmental disabilities.
Their program has grown to 10 people and they want to be able to take them into the community — to the mall, a baseball game, the grocery store — without splitting them up among their staff’s various personal vehicles, which aren’t designed for wheelchair access.
“That’s a huge aspect of what we’re trying to do with these people is get them integrated into the community. The value (of that) is priceless. It really is,” Ramon-Doughman said. The couple were ultimately unsuccessful in their bids, falling a few hundred dollars short of winning the 14-passenger shuttle buses they bid on.
Several bidders walked away disappointed from the sale. More than 240 bids were received for the 29 vehicles. The Rev. James Cotton, pastor of Holy David Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago, wanted a van to take his church kids back and forth to Sunday and Wednesday night services and maybe even take a trip to an area resort.
“We’re going to have to rent me a van now,” Cotton said, laughing.
Route 231 Trucks was the winning bidder on 16 of the 29 vehicles at a cost of about $48,000.
That outcome disappointed Ramon-Doughman, who hoped to see the vans, 80 percent of which were originally purchased with federal tax dollars, to stay in the public transportation business.
source: http://www.post-trib.com