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PARATRANSIT community agencies in the region. Fifty-percent of CAT's customers are ADA paratransit eligible, with the other 50% ineligible but still either disabled, elderly or economically challenged. Tere is no certifcation process for a majority of the services provided through CAT. Trough King County Metro, CAT has two programs — Advantage and Vanworks — providing some combination of vehicles, maintenance, driver training, insurance and fuel. Advantage agencies are responsible for providing drivers and scheduling, insurance and at least 150 trips per month for CAT eligible customers, while Vanworks agencies must provide drivers and scheduling, backup drivers, bookkeepers, insurance and at least 50 one-way trips per month for CAT eligible customers. Tere are also grants available for Advantage agencies to cover fuel, insurance, and administrative costs for nonproft agencies that serve low-income customers and can demonstrate a need for fnancial assistance. 38 < mETRO mAGAZINE MAY 2013 King County Metro Transit "When we frst started out, the focus of the program was on underutilized county resources," says Don Okazaki, CAT program manager/transportation planner for King County Metro. "We would retire our Access vans when they had up to two years of service life left, but when they were used for CAT program where they aren't used as much, we could get fve or six years out of them. It was a very low cost program to start." The agencies for both programs benefit because they can customize their transportation services to meet their clients' needs. "Te initial focus was to create a program to fll gaps in service, and as we saw it was much more cost efective than Ac- cess, there was obvious benefits to expanding it," says Okazaki. From 2007 to 2012, the number of CAT vans has gone from 53 to 100 with boardings going from 141,368 to 312,795 passengers, 52% of which are non-ADA registered riders. Meanwhile the average cost per ride on King County Metro's Access has gone from $36.15 to $44.59 from 2007 to 20012, with the current average cost per ride on CAT holding steady at around $5.02. When comparing the cost to provide trips on Access versus CAT, King County Metro's projected annual cost savings has nearly quadrupled, going from $1.3 million saved in 2007 to $5.1 million saved in 2012. Okazaki explains that while the money metro-magazine.com