Sec. 980.8. Designation of coordinated service operator

(a) General requirements.

On or before completion of its draft coordinated public transportation service plan, a rural county recipient of planning and implementation funds shall designate an operator of passenger transportation to be its Coordinated Service Operator (CSO). The county's Coordinated Service Operator shall be responsible for the management, control, operation and maintenance of all elements, including any specialized components, of the county's coordinated public transportation service as described in the county's adopted and approved plan, and at the county's discretion, for applying for future operating and capital assistance grants, and future updating of the county's plan. The county government itself or a public transportation authority may be designated as the CSO (see also Section 980.11 of this Part), or a county may contract with another entity to be the CSO. If a county contracts with another entity, a competitive process for choosing the CSO must be used to afford private bus and taxi operators, or any other qualified party, an opportunity to operate the service. In such cases, the CSO must be an entity that has been granted or will obtain operating authority from the Department as a common carrier of the general public, for the coordinated service. If a County Government itself already owns and operates a public transportation service, it is expected that the county will designate itself as its CSO. In such cases, if the county does not designate itself, justification for establishing another public transportation service within the county, including the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of doing so, and the prospects of avoiding service duplication, must be included in the county's plan. The designated CSO must be an operator that is administratively, financially and operationally capable of managing and operating a countywide transportation system and one that is, or will be, willing and able to provide general purpose passenger transportation without preference to any population sub-group or agency affiliated clientele. If the designated CSO is one that did not have a prior history as a general purpose transportation operator, the process used and the operator designated must be included as a subject of the public hearing on the county's draft plan. In some cases, a new private, non-profit corporation may be established to be the CSO. If the designated CSO is an existing private, non-profit corporation, that corporation must modify its articles of incorporation as necessary to establish it as an operator of general purpose passenger transportation and agree to obtain operating authority from the Department as a common carrier of the general public.

(b) Sub-contracted Services.

For other than infrequent or incidental trips, and in some limited circumstances, a coordinated service operator in a rural county may purchase, through sub-contract, portions of the county's coordinated service from other transportation operators, under the following conditions:

(1) justification for doing so must be provided in the county's adopted plan and that justification must be based upon one or more of the following:

(i) the need to provide greater geographic area coverage by the coordinated service;

(ii) the need for specialized services, as defined in this Part, which may be market-segmented services based upon the differing amounts of physical assistance or service level quality needed by passengers;

(iii) the need to provide out-of-county services; or

(iv) the need to extend the hours of service availability to evening or weekend periods;

(2) the coordinated service operator must itself operate the majority of local passenger transportation service within the county;

(3) the coordinated service operator must control the operation of any such subcontracted service, including the subcontracted service's hours of operation, service area, service quality and design, routes, schedules, fares and reimbursement rates, and other operating practices;

(4) any subcontracted service operator must possess, or obtain, operating authority from the Department as a common or contract carrier;

(5) there must be no duplication of service of any kind;

(6) vehicles to be used by any subcontractor in providing a portion of the county's coordinated service must meet Departmental vehicle inspection requirements, and must be prominently identified and marked, during its subcontract hours, as available to the general public and being a part of the county's coordinated public transportation service; and

(7) Regular and continuing services operated by a subcontractor must meet all eligibility requirements of this Part.