Marion County, FL Transportation: Marion Transit Steps Down and a New Coordinator Takes Over

Marion County’s paratransit has run through one nonprofit for more than four decades. Marion Senior Services, operating as Marion Transit, has been the county’s Community Transportation Coordinator since 1982 and was reappointed on July 1, 2025 after a formal selection. On July 15, 2026, it told the community it would give up that role effective December 31, 2026, partway through that term. The Ocala Marion Transportation Planning Organization (TPO), which plans the program for the county, is now choosing who takes over on January 1, 2027. State steps such as Florida Medicaid enrollment and owner screening are on the Florida guide.

Who runs Marion County transportation today

Marion Transit books rides at 352-620-3071 and runs them from 1101 SW 20th Court in Ocala, over more than 1,600 square miles. Its service plan for 2025 to 2030, approved by the local coordinating board on September 11, 2025, sets these terms:

• Hours. Monday through Friday, 5:00 am to 7:00 pm, with special arrangements for dialysis riders with early, late, or Saturday appointments.
• Booking. Two weeks to 72 hours ahead. ADA riders can call by 5:00 pm the day before.
• Fare. $2.00 a one-way trip as of June 2025, with waivers for low-income riders.
• Vehicles. ADA-equipped cutaway buses for ambulatory and wheelchair riders, with lifts rated at 800 or 1,000 pounds. It cannot carry stretchers.

The plan’s list of the county’s ten main ride destinations includes four DaVita dialysis centers and a Fresenius Kidney Care clinic, all in Ocala. The fleet stood at 41 buses in June 2026, and its transportation director said cutting buses had lowered insurance costs, since premiums are charged per bus.

Four programs, four ways of paying

Marion Transit’s drivers carry four kinds of trips, each funded differently. Its transportation director gave the TPO board these 2025 figures on August 25, 2026:

Program	Who rides	One-way trips, 2025	How the trip is paid
Transportation Disadvantaged	Seniors, riders with a disability, and residents under 150% of the poverty level, countywide	20,472	State trust fund grant (90%) and county match (10%), per trip
ADA paratransit	Riders qualified through the Center for Independent Living, within three-quarters of a mile of a SunTran route	24,832	Per mile, under a contract with RATP Dev, the company that operates SunTran
Federal Section 5311	Residents of the county’s rural areas	33,322	Federal grant through FDOT with a 50% county match, reimbursed on passenger miles and hours
Federal Section 5310	Seniors and people with disabilities anywhere in the county	6,741	Federal grant through FDOT with a 50% county match, reimbursed the same way

The rural 5311 service is the largest, at 39% of trips and 47% of service miles. An average Transportation Disadvantaged trip ran about 13 miles and 44 minutes. The director told the board that splitting the rural service away from the ADA and Transportation Disadvantaged trips would be hard, given how many rural riders depend on it. Ocala’s growth management director added that the buses were bought with different grants, so any transfer would have to be worked out with FDOT. Do not count on inheriting the fleet.

Why Marion Transit is stepping down

At a TPO workshop on August 25, 2026, executive director Jennifer Martinez said the reason was liability risk, not a lack of program money. She said Marion Senior Services had paid about $1.3 million for $1 million of auto liability coverage, that its auto liability costs had tripled in three years, and that a bill extending sovereign immunity to coordinators had not passed. The agency’s attorney told the board that handing the buses to the county would not bring immunity unless the county took full operational control.

The board weighed a local government becoming coordinator, either running the service itself or hiring an operator, against a TPO request for proposals for a new coordinator. It chose the request for proposals, and agreed to keep pressing for a sovereign immunity bill limited to coordinators. Martinez said the December 31 date has some flexibility so riders are not stranded during the handover.

Two neighbors already use the county model the board set aside for now. In Lake County and Sumter County, the county commission is the coordinator and runs none of the trips itself, according to the state’s report for July 2024 to June 2025.

The coordinator contract: dates, money, and insurance

TPO staff finalized the request for proposals with review and endorsement from the Commission for the Transportation Disadvantaged’s area manager and executive director. Marion County Procurement Services released it and handles the solicitation, which the county’s procurement portal lists as 26P-128, Community Transportation Coordinator (CTC) for TPO. The schedule from the TPO board’s September 22, 2026 agenda:

1. September 10, 2026. The request for proposals is released.
2. October 12, 2026. Proposals are due.
3. October 26 to November 4, 2026. A selection committee meets, on dates still tentative.
4. November 12, 2026. The local coordinating board recommends a coordinator.
5. By November 24, 2026. The TPO board makes its recommendation.
6. December 10, 2026. The Commission for the Transportation Disadvantaged approves the coordinator.
7. January 1, 2027. The new agreement starts, and it runs to June 30, 2031.

The City of Ocala asked that SunTran’s ADA paratransit be folded into the same procurement, and the board told staff to work that out with the city, so read the scope for which programs are included. Florida’s Rule 41-2.010 has every coordinator request for proposals ask for your key staff, financial capacity, equipment, experience, and most recent audit by a certified public accountant. In its August 2026 workshop packet, the TPO counted 31 private coordinators in Florida, 5 for-profit and 26 nonprofit, so a company can hold the role. For how public ride bids are posted and scored, see government NEMT contracts.

What the work pays and costs

The local board approved Transportation Disadvantaged rates for 2026-27 on June 11, 2026: $36.37 per ambulatory trip and $62.36 per wheelchair trip, up from $36.31 and $62.25. These are the amounts the coordinator draws from the state grant for each trip, and the rate model sets no stretcher rate. At that meeting, Marion Transit expected the state grant to rise about 13.6 percent, from just under $900,000 to slightly more than $1 million, on a preliminary allocation. The ADA contract paid $4.05 a mile for ambulatory trips and $6.95 a mile for wheelchair trips as of August 2026.

These figures come from the coordinator’s reports to the Commission, and they count Marion Transit and its coordination contractors together:

Measure	July 2024 to June 2025	July 2025 to June 2026
Total trips	112,830	107,099
Medical trips	40,144	39,202
Trips by coordination contractors	32,389	26,165
Trips by other operators	None	None
Trips paid by Medicaid	None	None
Vehicles	76	68
Drivers	64	69
Cost per trip	$49.07	$53.84
Expenses	$5,536,810	$5,766,526

The 2025-26 report is dated September 3, 2026 and was still under the Commission’s review. The coordination contractors are ARC Marion, the Florida Center for the Blind, and Bridge to Hope, which carry their own clients. Marion Transit’s own casualty and liability expense was $344,302 in 2023-24, $715,120 in 2024-25, and $678,705 in 2025-26, so get an insurance quote before you price a bid. In the 2026 coordinator evaluation, operator and coordination contracts required at least $1,000,000 in liability coverage. See NEMT insurance requirements.

Permits in Marion County and Ocala

Marion County does not license wheelchair or stretcher vans. Its certificate of public convenience and necessity, in Chapter 10, Article VIII of the county code (Ordinance 21-05, March 2, 2021), covers basic and advanced life support ambulances only. If you add a basic life support ambulance, the county charges $500 to apply for interfacility transport, requires $1,000,000 in combined single limit auto liability on each vehicle and $1,000,000 per occurrence ($3,000,000 a year) in medical professional liability, and grants a six-year certificate after a public hearing.

The City of Ocala requires a five-year franchise for vehicle for hire companies under Chapter 74 of its code. Section 74-38 exempts non-medical wheelchair and stretcher transport service from all of it. It also exempts limited sedan service, meaning rides to medical appointments that an insurer prearranges and approves, and vehicles a transportation operator runs under contract with the coordinator.

Medicaid rides in Marion County

Marion is in Medicaid Region B. On August 31, 2026, 60,123 Marion members were in the state’s main Medicaid health plans, not counting specialty and child welfare plans, and each plan hands its rides to a broker:

Broker	Plans it covers in Marion	Marion plan members
Alivi	Sunshine Health	32,813
MTM Health	UnitedHealthcare (since March 1, 2026) and Molina	13,919
Modivcare	Humana, Aetna, and Community Care Plan	10,071
Ride2MD	Simply Healthcare and Florida Community Care	3,320

Members outside a plan call MTM Health at 1-844-239-5974 under the state’s waiver for July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2027. That waiver’s 2025 count of MTM’s Marion network was 19 vehicles, 16 cabs and 3 lift vans, with no stretcher vehicle. Marion Transit’s 2025 service plan says it has no agreement with any Medicaid plan, so Medicaid trips in the county go through the brokers’ own networks.

What to do first

1. Get the request for proposals if you want the coordinator role or a piece of it. Marion County Procurement Services released it as solicitation 26P-128 on September 10, 2026, and proposals are due October 12, 2026.
2. Attend the November 12, 2026 coordinating board meeting, where the board recommends the next coordinator. Its 2026 meetings have been held at Marion County Growth Services, 2710 E. Silver Springs Blvd. in Ocala, and are open to the public.
3. Call the new coordinator after the Commission’s December 10 vote. Ask whether it will contract operators, and at what rates and insurance limits.
4. Look at stretcher work. Neither Marion Transit nor MTM’s counted Marion vehicles carry stretchers. See start a stretcher transportation business.
5. Enroll with Florida Medicaid and apply to Alivi first, since Sunshine Health covers more than half of Marion’s plan members, then to MTM Health and Modivcare.

North of Ocala, Alachua County requires a county certificate before a wheelchair or stretcher company can run its first trip, so check the rules in each county where you pick up riders.