Volusia County Paratransit: VoAccess Operator Contracts, Trip Rates, and Van Rules

Volusia County drives most of its own paratransit. Votran, the county’s Transit Services Division, has been the Community Transportation Coordinator for more than 30 years, and it hands a share of the trips to a short list of private operators chosen by public solicitation. Florida’s statewide steps, such as Medicaid enrollment and owner screening, are on the Florida guide.

Who runs paratransit in Volusia County

Votran runs VoAccess out of 950 Big Tree Road in South Daytona. The service was called Votran Gold until the county renamed it in the fall of 2025, during Votran’s 50th anniversary. VoAccess serves two kinds of riders:

• ADA riders. People who live within three-quarters of a mile of a Votran bus route but cannot ride the bus for at least some trips because of a disability. A physician fills out part of the application.
• Transportation Disadvantaged riders. People who live farther than three-quarters of a mile from a route and have no other way to travel.

Approval takes up to 21 days. Riders call 386-761-7700 between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m., book from one to seven days ahead, and pay $3.50 each way, with a certified personal care attendant riding free. VoAccess carries no Medicaid trips at all, and its rider page sends Medicaid members to the Medicaid Helpline, 1-877-254-1055.

The state’s report for July 2024 to June 2025 lists Volusia as a partial brokerage. Votran drives some trips, contracted operators drive others, and three nonprofits carry their own clients under coordination contracts. The coordinator’s 2026 evaluation names them: the Center for the Visually Impaired and Sunrise Community of Northeast Florida, both in Daytona Beach, and Duvall Homes in Glenwood.

Since August 15, 2025, RATP Dev has operated and maintained Votran’s own service under a third-party contract. On August 26, 2026, the Volusia-Flagler Transportation Planning Organization (TPO), which must recommend a coordinator to the state every five years, recommended keeping Votran.

The 2026 VoAccess operator contracts

The county picks its paratransit operators by request for statement of qualifications. The latest one, 26-SQ-23AK, “Paratransit Contractor (VoAccess)”, closed April 7, 2026 and drew two responses. On May 19, 2026, the county council voted 7 to 0 to sign both: Med-One Shuttle, Inc., of Daytona Beach, and Community Connections Transportations, Inc., which lists a Deltona mailing address. Each agreement runs three years from the day it is fully signed, with two one-year renewals by written agreement of both sides.

The council item sets the scale. Votran projects about 200,000 paratransit trips a year, runs about 70% in house, and contracts about 30% to private for-profit operators, sorting trips by area, vehicle capacity, and trip density. The county set aside an estimated $1,800,000 a year for contracted paratransit. The trip counts are informational only, and neither contract guarantees any volume.

Each operator bid its own price for every one-way trip, for each of the five possible contract years:

Charge per one-way trip	Med-One Shuttle	Community Connections
Ambulatory rider	$37.54 in year 1, rising to $52.51 in year 5	$49.66 in year 1, rising to $54.76 in year 5
Wheelchair rider	$57.85 in year 1, rising to $87.00 in year 5	$49.66 in year 1, rising to $54.76 in year 5
Personal care attendant	$7.00 in year 1, rising to $11.00	$10.00 every year
No-show or cancellation at the door	$13.00 in year 1, rising to $17.00	$24.83 in year 1, rising to $27.38

The attendant rides free, and the operator bills the county for that seat instead. Operators collect the fare the tablet shows, keep cash fares, and subtract them from the invoice. The county accepts invoices weekly, pays once a month after it matches each duty report to the fares collected, and pays within 45 days of accepting the work. A pickup more than one hour late, or one that makes the rider miss an appointment, is a missed trip and earns nothing.

These two contracts follow a set signed in June 2023 with four operators: All Volusia Transport, Community Connections Transportations, Kings Transportation Group, and Med-One Shuttle. The coordinator’s 2026 evaluation listed those contracts as expiring in April and June 2026, and noted that Kings was under contract but getting no trips because of invoicing and inspection issues. A separate accessible taxicab contract signed in May 2025 went to Community Connections and Kings.

What a VoAccess operator has to run

The scope of services attached to both 2026 agreements spells out the operation:

• Base. An operating base inside Volusia County with secure parking, an office reachable by a dedicated phone line and email during service hours, and two-way communication that reaches across the whole county.
• Vans. Every vehicle wheelchair accessible under 49 CFR Part 38, no older than 15 years and under 350,000 miles, with at least one front-facing securement station and interior video kept at least 10 days. Portable steps are not allowed. The county’s removable “PROVIDING SERVICE FOR VoAccess” sign goes on both sides.
• Inspections. A daily defect sheet for each van, kept 30 days, and county inspections twice a year at Big Tree Road.
• Dispatch. Drivers work from county-supplied tablets, and you provide a computer with internet so your dispatcher can work live in the county’s scheduling system. Manifests go out the night before, and same-day add-ons arrive on the tablet.
• Drivers. No points on the record for three years, a DOT physical and drug screen every two years even without a CDL, an FDLE background check every two years (plus the last state for anyone in Florida under five years), and a sex offender search every two years. No felony or violent crime, and no non-violent misdemeanor in the past 10 years.
• Training and testing. Defensive driving through a National Safety Council program, passenger assistance and sensitivity training, retraining in defensive driving and passenger sensitivity every three years, and FTA drug and alcohol testing at your cost through the lab under contract with FDOT, at FTA’s current 50% random rate.
• Service. 95% on time against the rider’s scheduled time, a five-minute wait at the door, will-call returns picked up within two hours, rides capped at one hour locally and two hours across the county, and a relief van within 30 minutes of a breakdown.
• Federal paperwork. A SAM registration before you submit and the FTA third-party contract clauses. Because federal transit money is involved, the award used no local preference.

Votran settles quarterly incentives and deductions on a separate invoice. You earn $250 for beating 95% on time, $250 for a quarter with no accidents, $25 for each van that passes inspection the first time, and $100 to $250 for a quarter with no justified complaints. You lose $100 for missing the on-time standard, $50 for each failed inspection, $100 for each accident unless it is shown to be non-preventable, $500 for each late required report, and $100 a day for a run you drop with less than a day’s notice. The benchmark is 2.5 passengers an hour, since VoAccess groups riders onto shared runs.

The coordinator’s 2026 evaluation lists these minimums, and the same ones in its operator and coordination contracts: $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 aggregate in general liability, $1,000,000 combined single limit in auto liability, and $1,000,000 in professional liability. Get quotes at those limits before you price a bid, using NEMT insurance requirements.

How much contracted work there is in 2026

In the year ending June 30, 2025, the coordinated system carried 242,054 trips, 74,923 of them medical. Votran carried 111,836, operators 83,751, and the three coordination contractors 46,467. The whole system ran 125 vehicles and 177 drivers at $44.86 a trip, and Medicaid paid for none of the trips.

Contracted work has shrunk since. Votran’s monthly reports to the local coordinating board show operators carried 2,994 trips in March 2026, against 6,697 in March 2025, and 2,869 in April 2026, against 7,407. Votran’s own trips fell far less, from 9,777 to 8,574 in March. At the board’s April 8, 2026 meeting, reviewing November 2025 to January 2026, Votran staff said trips were down because of available funding. Ask Votran how many runs a new operator can expect before you buy a van for this work.

The state money behind the program moved too. On July 8, 2026, the board approved 2026-27 Transportation Disadvantaged rates of $47.46 an ambulatory trip and $81.37 a wheelchair trip on 29,800 projected trips, down from $48.60 and $83.32. Those are what Votran draws from the state grant for each trip, not what it pays an operator. In December 2025 the Commission also gave Votran a $450,000 Innovative Service Development grant for same-day rides for ambulatory riders through a rideshare partnership that started in January 2026. Through April 2026 the grant had paid $7,636.60 for 223 trips by 25 riders. The 2026 contracts also let the county send same-day trips, will-call returns, holiday trips, and after-hours trips to taxis or rideshare companies.

Permits in Volusia County and Daytona Beach

Volusia County does not license wheelchair or stretcher vans. Section 46-88 of the county code sets five levels of emergency medical service, and the four that need a county certificate of public convenience and necessity are ambulance transport, advanced life support first response, and air ambulance service.

Daytona Beach repealed its old certificate system in Ordinance 18-337, October 3, 2018, and Chapter 102 of its code now sets rules for operators of vehicles for hire. Each operator needs a city vehicle-for-hire permit from the permit and licensing division, renewed every year, with a $40.00 administrative fee and a $15.00 renewal fee under section 102-38. Each vehicle carries the for-hire auto liability that section 324.032 of the state statutes sets, each driver gets a criminal and driving history check at least every three years, and anyone with more than three moving violations in three years may not drive. The chapter’s definition leaves out any company that arranges Medicaid or Medicare rides under a contract with the state or a health plan. Before you take private-pay or county-contract riders in the city, ask the permit and licensing division whether your vans need the permit.

Medicaid rides in Volusia County

Volusia is in Medicaid Region B, where members outside a health plan ride through MTM Health under the state’s waiver for July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2027, and plan members ride through their plan’s broker. The Florida guide explains enrollment, and MTM Health in Florida covers that network.

On August 31, 2026, 67,907 Volusia members were in the main Medicaid health plans. Sunshine Health had 29,518, with rides through Alivi. UnitedHealthcare had 23,665, about 35% of the county’s plan members, and moved its Florida Medicaid rides to MTM Health on March 1, 2026. Humana had 10,588, with rides through Modivcare, and Simply Healthcare and Florida Community Care together had 4,111, with rides through Ride2MD. The state’s 2025 count of MTM’s Volusia network was 25 vehicles: 14 cabs, 9 lift vans, and 2 stretcher vehicles.

How to get paratransit work in Volusia County

1. Register for county bid notices through the Purchasing and Contracts “Doing business” page, so you see the next call for VoAccess operators. The 2026 agreements can run about five years with both renewals, but the county kept the right to add operators if trips are not being covered on time.
2. Build to the 2026 scope now. A base in the county, accessible vans under 15 years old with interior video, and driver files with DOT physicals, FDLE checks, and sex offender searches are what the county inspects.
3. Set up the federal pieces. Register in SAM and join an FTA drug and alcohol testing program. The ADA paratransit contractor guide explains both.
4. Go to the local coordinating board. Its next meeting is October 14, 2026, and its July meeting was held at Votran, 950 Big Tree Road. The board has a seat for a private for-profit operator, held by Med-One Shuttle’s representative, and the alternate for that seat was vacant on July 8, 2026.
5. Ask the two operators about overflow runs. The agreements allow subcontractors, but the county may object to any of them and must approve a substitute, so expect to meet the same terms. Read running trips as a subcontractor first.
6. Apply to the Medicaid brokers. Sunshine Health and UnitedHealthcare cover most Volusia plan members, so start with Alivi and MTM Health once your Florida Medicaid enrollment is in place.