Juneau seeks comment on plan to keep ride providers eligible for state grants

The City and Borough of Juneau on Monday released a draft five-year plan for rides for seniors, people with disabilities and people with lower incomes, and three of the six service providers whose questionnaires are in it describe missed pickups or lost rides since the city's paratransit service changed contractors last fall.

"Several of our residents have not been picked up and have missed appointments," the Juneau Pioneer Home wrote of CAPITAL AKcess, the city's free door-to-door service for people whose disabilities limit their use of buses. Reliable paratransit is the greatest unmet transportation need for the state-run home for people 60 and older, the plan says.

Catholic Community Services ran CAPITAL AKcess until the end of October 2025. Under that contract, it used about $100,000 a year in Medicaid Waiver money to give door-to-door rides to seniors who didn't have ADA cards. It now provides no transportation in Juneau. "There are limited/no senior rides that we are aware of" since the switch, it wrote. It is interested in restarting senior rides, which would take a vehicle, an operations plan and startup money, according to the plan.

The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, which serves extremely low-income and homeless people, named unreliable paratransit scheduling that leaves seniors missing appointments as the biggest barrier, according to the plan's summary of its response.

The draft also notes that CAPITAL AKcess use has dropped as more riders use Capital Transit's free VIP bus pass. It offers two possible reasons: more people learning to navigate the pass's application process, a goal of the last plan, and, "anecdotally," recent survey responses "indicating scheduling difficulties and inconsistent pickup reliability."

The service gave about 22,900 rides in 2025, compared with 33,458 in 2019, according to the 2020 plan. Ridership fell during the pandemic and has risen since, the new draft says, and Catholic Community Services ran the service for the first 10 months of 2025.

Capital Transit's own response projects CAPITAL AKcess ridership at 23,900 in 2026 and lists added paratransit capacity among its unmet needs. The plan's combined list of unmet needs cites a shortage of paratransit vehicles and capacity that it says will get worse as the senior population grows, and one of its five priorities is to look at expanding contracted or partner-operated services to add paratransit capacity. The list doesn't mention missed pickups or the contractor change.

Juneau's Commission on Aging has raised similar complaints for months. Its chair, Deborah Craig, told the Assembly in July that the new provider had struggled to meet its contract for nine months, and her draft testimony this month says the service needs to improve now or the city should change contractors.

The plan matters for grant money. The city says it has to be updated every five years for Juneau providers to keep drawing state Human Services Transportation grants, which combine federal Section 5310 money and Alaska Mental Health Trust funds, and that publishing it keeps them eligible through 2031. The coalition of city, social service and nonprofit partners that approved the draft Oct. 8 ranked Southeast Alaska Independent Living's replacement ADA taxi first and REACH's new 12-passenger accessible bus second for the next grant round, according to its minutes. Applications are due Dec. 18.

The draft projects Juneau's population will fall from about 31,200 in 2025 to 24,900 by 2050, with the share of residents 60 and older rising from 25% to nearly 30%.

The Assembly Public Works and Facilities Committee takes up the draft at noon Nov. 2. Written comments go to Senior Planner Forrest Courtney until 8 am Nov. 9, and the Assembly will take public testimony at its 6 pm meeting Nov. 16.