IMPORTANT COMMUNITY NOTICE

Help Us Launch Strong

Catch a Ride is transitioning from an employment based program to a fully expanded public transit service for Waupaca County and the City of Waupaca. We are excited to get started — and we want to be clear about how the service will work at first.

Advanced Booking at Launch

When Catch a Ride first launches:

• All rides must be booked at least 24 hours in advance
• This helps us learn where rides are needed and how to serve as many people as possible
• It allows us to schedule drivers and vehicles across the county
• It helps us build a service that is safe and reliable

Urgent or same-day rides: If you have an urgent need, you may try to request a same-day ride. Please know that same-day rides will be very limited when the service first starts.

Trip Purpose at Launch

During the first few weeks of service, we will focus first on rides for:

• Medical or healthcare related trips
• Work and job-related trips
• Grocery or food access related trips

As we grow our driver team, and understand travel patterns, we will expand availability for other trip purposes, like retail shopping, errands, and social trips.

Staffing & Start-Up Period

For the first 3–6 weeks, service may feel slower or more limited while we:

• Hire and train more drivers (our driver team is tripling in size and our training is extensive)
• Expand staffing for our call center
• Fine-tune our technology routing and mapping technology with the travel patterns for Waupaca County residents

We appreciate this is very challenging and we are doing our very best to get up to full capacity as soon as possible.

Booking Rules at Launch

• Rides must be requested at least 24 hours ahead
• Only medical/healthcare, employment, and food access trips will be accepted for the service initially to support essential rides as a top priority
• Same-day rides are for urgent needs only and will be very limited
• Booking options will expand as the service is fully staffed beyond the launch period