What Is Mobility Management? How Mobility Managers Send Rides to NEMT Companies

Every region has more ride programs than most riders can keep track of: Medicaid, aging services, disability agencies, transit, veterans programs, and private pay. A mobility manager is the person whose job is to know all of them and steer each rider to the one that fits. When the fit is a wheelchair van or a door-through-door ride, that referral can land on your company.

What mobility management means

Federal transit law lists mobility management as a kind of capital project. It covers short-range planning and management activities that improve coordination among public transportation and other transportation providers, carried out by a transit grantee or subgrantee under an agreement. It does not include operating transit service (49 U.S.C. 5302). In short, a mobility manager plans and arranges rides but does not run the vans with that money.

The Federal Transit Administration’s program guidance for Section 5310, Circular C 9070.1H (effective November 1, 2024), lists what the work can include:

Mobility management activity	What it means for a NEMT company
Promoting and coordinating access to rides for people with disabilities, older adults, and people with low incomes	The mobility manager keeps track of who provides what in the area
Short-term management to plan and start coordinated services	New shared routes, contracts, or pilot services can come out of it
Supporting state and local coordination councils	The meetings where local ride gaps are discussed
Running transportation brokerages that connect providers, funders, and riders	Some mobility management offices assign trips directly
Travel navigators, travel training, and trip planning for riders	Riders who can use the bus are moved to it, and riders who cannot are referred on
One-stop traveler call centers that handle eligibility and arrangements across programs	The call center decides which program pays for a ride and who drives it
Planning for scheduling, dispatch, tracking, and billing technology	Shared systems that providers in a coordinated network may be asked to use

Section 5310 pays 80 percent of the net cost of capital projects, and mobility management counts as capital. Operating assistance is capped at 50 percent (49 U.S.C. 5310). FTA apportioned $443,948,114 in Section 5310 money for fiscal year 2025. Its program page names both mobility management and non-emergency medical transportation as eligible projects. See grants for a NEMT business for the rest of the program.

Mobility manager vs NEMT broker

The two jobs sound alike, and some organizations hold both. They are paid differently and treat your company differently.

	Mobility manager	Medicaid NEMT broker
Who pays for the role	Transit grants such as Section 5310, plus state and local match	A Medicaid agency or health plan contract
How it is chosen	Picked by the state DOT or grantee through its own grant process	A state brokerage contract must be competitively bid (42 CFR 440.170(a)(4), SMD 23-006). Health plans pick their own ride vendors
Which trips	Any purpose and any program, including rides no program covers	Only rides to Medicaid-covered care
What it does with a request	Finds the right program and provider, and may book the ride	Approves the trip and assigns it to a network provider
Your paperwork	A listing, a referral relationship, or a service contract if its agency buys rides	A network agreement and credentialing

Two examples show how the roles can overlap. Hopelink runs a mobility management team with three travel training programs in King County, Washington, and also brokers Medicaid rides in King and Snohomish counties (see Hopelink). In Minnesota, the Scott/Carver Mobility Management office, SmartLink, books Medical Assistance rides and pays mileage reimbursement for eligible residents of Scott and Carver counties. For how brokers work, see NEMT broker.

Who does mobility management in each region

In many states the transportation department pays for mobility managers with Section 5310 money, and each state decides where they sit.

Where	Who the mobility managers are
Wisconsin	Staff of aging and disability resource centers, local governments, employment and community action programs, transit systems, human service agencies, independent living centers, and economic opportunity councils, funded through WisDOT’s 5310 and WETAP programs
Minnesota	Regional Transportation Coordinating Councils in Greater Minnesota, meaning the counties outside the seven-county Twin Cities area. MnDOT’s 2026/2027 grant offers about $2.5 million: 80 percent Section 5310, 10 percent state, and 10 percent local match, with grant agreements starting July 1, 2026
New Hampshire	A statewide mobility manager network that NHDOT funds, with a lead agency in each of the eight regions handling its mobility manager’s funds. As of September 2026, the site of the state and regional coordination councils lists mobility managers for six regions and shows the state mobility manager post and two regions vacant
VA medical centers	A Veterans Transportation Service mobility manager at each medical center with the service. VHA Directive 1695(1) has that person coordinate with local transportation providers and confirm the special mode criteria before arranging a special mode ride with a vendor

Minnesota’s 2026/2027 grant lists focus areas for the programs it funds, among them information and referral services and training for transportation providers, drivers, and staff. Wisconsin describes its mobility managers as policy coordinators, operations service brokers, and customer travel navigators, and puts an inventory of available services first among their key steps. That inventory is where your company needs to appear.

Some states build the same coordination into a different system. Florida has a community transportation coordinator for each service area, and Massachusetts and Kentucky run human service transportation brokers. Veterans’ rides have their own rules; see Veterans Transportation Service.

Why mobility managers send work to NEMT providers

A mobility manager’s job ends when the rider has a ride, and many rides need a provider the transit agency does not have. Five rules make private companies part of the answer.

1. Grantees can buy trips. Section 5310 makes buying transportation services a capital expense. Circular C 9070.1H covers services bought under a contract, lease, or other arrangement, and counts both the capital and operating costs of contracted service. That is how a nonprofit or county can pay you per trip. See Section 5310 grants.
2. Riders can pay you with vouchers. The circular lets a Section 5310 program give older adults and people with disabilities vouchers to buy rides, including taxi trips and trips run by human service agencies. The provider turns the voucher in to the grantee and is paid at set rates or under its contract. For this kind of voucher program, the circular requires a 50/50 federal and local match.
3. Medicaid pays only for Medicaid trips. CMS calls Medicaid the payer of last resort and limits it to rides to covered care when the member has no other way to get there (SMD 23-006). A mobility manager sends a Medicaid member’s clinic trip to the broker and looks elsewhere for everything else.
4. Private providers help shape the local plan. Every Section 5310 project must come from a coordinated public transit and human services plan developed with public, private, and nonprofit transportation providers. The circular lists private transportation providers, including taxi operators and private brokers, among the groups a region should consider bringing into that plan.
5. Other federal ride programs must coordinate. Governments and nonprofits that get non-DOT federal money for nonemergency transportation must coordinate with transit grantees and take part in planning (49 U.S.C. 5310).

What a referral looks like

Say a hospital discharge planner calls the regional mobility manager about a rider who needs a wheelchair van to dialysis three days a week. If the rider has Medicaid, the manager points the planner to the Medicaid broker, which may assign the trips to you. If not, the manager checks aging programs, disability programs, and any service a local grantee buys with Section 5310 money. If nothing covers the trips, the rider gets a list of private pay providers. Your company can end up with the rides in all three cases, but only if the mobility manager already knows your service area, hours, and vehicles. See private pay NEMT and area agency on aging transportation.

Rules that come with transit-funded trips

When a public agency contracts with a private company for demand-response service, the company must meet the same ADA rules the agency would, and vehicles bought for that service must be accessible wherever the agency’s would have to be (49 CFR 37.23). FTA’s drug and alcohol testing rule applies to recipients of Section 5307, 5309, and 5311 money and their contractors (49 CFR 655.3). Section 5310 is not on that list, but a contract can still require testing, so read each one.

How to work with a mobility manager, step by step

1. Find yours. Call your state DOT’s Section 5310 office, your regional planning agency, your transit agency, and your aging and disability resource center. For veterans, call the Veterans Transportation Service office at your VA medical center.
2. Send a one-page profile. List your service area, hours, vehicle types (ambulatory, wheelchair, stretcher), the brokers you work with, your private pay rates, and your insurance limits.
3. Ask to be on the provider list. Ask whether the office runs a call center, a ride directory, or a referral list, and how a provider gets added.
4. Join the coordinated plan. Ask when the plan is next updated and attend the regional council meetings. Name the rides you can cover, such as evenings, weekends, or stretcher trips.
5. Ask who buys service. Find out which agencies in the region purchase rides, whether by request for proposals, per-trip contract, or voucher, and when the next solicitation opens.
6. Keep your files ready. Transit-funded contracts bring reporting, so keep a complete trip log and current driver and vehicle files.