Slide 1 – Welcome to Transportation – The Great Equalizer. My name is Patty Olmsted from the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission. We’re glad to have you join us today and look forward to providing you with some great information about workforce mobility options and funding.

Before we get started, I want to mention a couple of housekeeping items. Please keep your line muted unless you are presenting. Feel free to post questions in the chat function in Teams.

Slide 2 – We have a few of the leading mobility providers in Central Ohio here to speak with us. To save time, each presenter will introduce themselves before their presentation.

Slide 3 – I would like to thank the City of New Albany for co-sponsoring our webinar today. I appreciate all of Michael and Jackie’s efforts to make today’s webinar possible.

Slide 4 – Today I would like to talk to you about why transportation benefits matter. To understand why transportation benefits can be an important tool, we first need to understand the state of our economy.

Currently, the unemployment rate is around 5.4%, which is down from 9.3% at this same time last year. This means there are fewer individuals to fill jobs in Central Ohio. To make it even more difficult, 23 to 43% of households have only one or no car to transport them to these jobs.

An additional factor for employees is rising fuel costs. Fuel costs have risen around $1.00 per gallon in the last year. In 2021, food-at-home prices have increased 2.5 to 3.5%. The reality for many of our workforce is choosing between fuel or food. Many food pantries are experiencing a record number of customers.

Knowing the challenge, how does a company come up with a solution, without trying to constantly raise wages to entice the 5.4% of the unemployed to work for them? How do we keep our workforce from leaving their current position, for a new position that has a lower cost of commuting to work?