Community Transit Of Watertown Sisseton Inc

Two areas of service CTWSI continues to take pride in are our medical transportation contracts and rides for veterans. Prairie Lakes Healthcare (PLH) and Watertown Area Transit (WATI) entered a contract for service in 2016. This agreement called for WATI to provide rides to and from all medical facilities in the city of Watertown and PLH would pay the fare. When CTWSI was formed in 2019, the contract remained in place. In November of 2024, CTWSI and PLH finalized a contract for a ninth year. PLH also agreed to an increase in fares at the request of CTWSI administrators.

CTWSI is a South Dakota Medicaid provider and continues to provide rides for those sponsored trips to varied locations across the region. The most frequent destinations are Sioux Falls, Watertown, Aberdeen and Brookings in SD and Bismarck and Fargo, ND. Other destinations in SD have included Yankton, Redfield, Desmet, Milbank, Mobridge, Ipswich, Webster, Britton, Pierre, Mitchell and Rapid City. There have been trips booked to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MM and the U. of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Indian Health Services has utilized CTWESI for medical trips in our service area.

CTWSI signed an MOU with River Cities Transit in 2020 to transport Veterans as part of the Highly Rural Transportation Grant. This grant allows CTWSI to transport qualified veterans in the counties designated as highly rural (less than 7 people per square mile) to appointments in a variety of locations. The HRTG pays the fare to CTWSI for the rides. In our coverage area, Deuel, Clark, Day, Marshall, Spink, Faulk, McPherson and Campbell counties are considered highly rural.Our overall increase in ridership is considered an accomplishment because of the impact our service had in our communities. Overall, the CTWSI ridership increased by over 8,000 in one year - from 182,002 to 190,603. Watertown's ridership increased by 13,000 rides from 70,500 to 83,614. The biggest increase was in rides for employment, which became the leading category for transportation. Overall, education remains the largest category for riders followed by medical and employment rides. CTWSI became approved vendors for the Veterans Administration allowing us another avenue to serve veterans.Administrators continue to speak to any audience about the benefits and the workings of public transit. We assume the outreach we do is at least partially responsible for the large growth in ridership numbers. Social media is still our favorite source for advertising. We are in the process of revamping our website and are excited about the possibilities in the future. Word of mouth is still our most beneficial method of reaching the public and so we continue to be a face in the crowd as much and as often as possible.We are a member of the SD Transit Providers Association, Dakota Transit Association and Community Transportation of America. Co-Executive Director Kathy Holman was elected as the new president of the DTA in October. She replaced CTWSl's other Co-Executive Director Terry Hoffman in the same role. He completed a 9-year run on the board.