Human services transportation serves people with special transportation needs. Washington state law defines people with special transportation needs as “persons, including their personal attendants, who because of physical or mental disability, income status, or age are unable to transport themselves or purchase transportation.”
The Whatcom Council of Governments (WCOG) updates the regional Human Services Transportation Plan (HSTP) every five years to identify our region’s transportation services gaps for people with special transportation needs. This is done in response to direction from the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), issued in 2006, for WCOG and the state’s other Regional Transportation Planning Organizations to convene stakeholder groups composed of local human services agencies, schools, transportation providers and others to develop consolidated human services transportation plans to address the mobility needs of people who do not drive due to age, income or disability reasons.
The 2026 Human Services Transportation Plan
WCOG is currently collecting input for the 2026 update of the HSTP. To provide feedback please email us at participate@wcog.org, call us at 360-685-8385, or fill out our 5-question survey.
The draft HSTP will be available in the summer of 2026.
Current (2022) Human Services Transportation Plan
In 2022, the HSTP was updated concurrently with the Whatcom Regional Transportation Plan, a plan with a broader scope but one that also focuses on gaps and needs in our community. This plan, Way to Go, Whatcom: Whatcom Region’s 2045 Regional & Metropolitan Transportation Plan, forecasts transportation demand that our region will experience over the next 23 years and presents strategies to meet that demand in alignment with the regional transportation goals. Some of the insights from this plan have been incorporated in the HSTP to highlight the region’s most pressing needs. Correspondingly, the HSTP offers insights to the larger plan.
The 2022 Whatcom Human Services Transportation Plan was adopted by the Whatcom Transportation Policy Board on October 13, 2022. For those wishing to view the document in a different format, or who have questions regarding this plan, please contact Melissa Fanucci, Principal Planner, at 360-685-8385 or via email.
