Summit County NET Transportation: The METRO Call Center, Nine Ride Companies, and Their Rates

Summit County, home to Akron, puts its transit agency between its Medicaid riders and its ride companies. Summit County Job and Family Services (SCDJFS) decides who rides, METRO Regional Transit Authority answers the phones and assigns the trips, and nine companies drive them. Every contract, renewal, and spending cap goes to County Council in a public resolution, so you can see who holds the work and roughly what each company earns.

How Summit County NET rides work

Rule 5160-15-10 makes each Ohio county job and family services office the arranger for Medicaid rides that no health plan has to give, and each county picks its own way to buy them. The Ohio guide covers the plans and their brokers, and county NET contracts in Ohio compares how the counties buy rides.

The county’s filed transportation profile, form ODM 10241 effective October 1, 2025, splits the job in two. SCDJFS handles intake, decides eligibility, and picks the type of help. METRO, as broker, does all the scheduling. SCDJFS, METRO, and the ride companies all keep trip records. The profile marks contracted rides and paid transit as the help Summit gives regularly, bus passes as help it gives sometimes, and fuel vouchers, mileage payments, and rides in county cars as help it never gives.

A rider calls SCDJFS at 330-643-8200, option 1, generally at least five days before the appointment. Once a caseworker confirms Medicaid eligibility, SCDJFS sends METRO an approval and gives the rider METRO’s number. The rider then books every trip through METRO. SCDJFS renews each rider’s approval every three to six months, according to the Ohio Auditor of State’s June 2025 performance audit.

Trips may go anywhere in Summit County and the adjacent counties within 50 miles of the rider’s home. The profile says that radius takes in the major hospital systems in the Akron, Canton, and Cleveland areas, including the Cleveland Clinic main campus and University Hospitals, and that the county has no resources for trips beyond it.

Who holds the Summit County NET contracts

METRO holds two roles at once. As broker, it runs the call center, schedules rides with the contracted companies by each rider’s mobility needs, and checks that each company keeps its service records, licenses, driver qualifications, training, insurance, and vehicle standards up to date. It is also one of the nine ride companies. The audit noted that the broker’s fee counts as a direct cost that Medicaid funding fully reimburses, while county staff doing the same scheduling would be an indirect cost pooled with the department’s other overhead.

The 2025 bid, RFP JFS 2025036, drew ten proposals, and the county selected all ten. Nine appear on the county’s profile and spending lists, and the tenth, River North Transit of New York, does not. Each contract pays a negotiated unit rate with no ceiling of its own, and council sets one ceiling for all of them each year. This table shows each company’s proposed 2025 rate and its projected spending for October 1, 2026 to September 30, 2027:

Company (base)	2025 bid	Projected, 2026 to 2027
A Blessed Path, dba ReliaRide (Canton)	$14.00 a mile in county, $12.00 outside	$5,573,700
Don Brodies Thomas Limousine (Akron)	$14.00 a mile	$1,735,000
United Disability Services (Akron)	$10.78 a mile	$1,455,000
City Yellow Cab Company (Akron)	Sedan $6.15 a mile, wheelchair $11.86 a mile	$785,700
Sunset Transportation Partners (Ashtabula)	Sedan $7.75 a mile, wheelchair $10.75 a mile	$585,000
Emmanuel Ventures (Cleveland, Akron)	$10.00 a mile	$513,000
METRO Regional Transit Authority (Akron)	$5.40 a mile	$212,000
About U Transport (Akron)	$31.00 a trip plus $1.30 a mile	$78,000
The Fitchburg Consortium (Massachusetts and Cleveland)	Sedan $8.00 load fee plus $2.45 a mile, wheelchair $35.00 plus $2.50 a mile	$62,600

The work is concentrated. ReliaRide’s projection is just over half the total, and the top three companies account for about 80% of it. The pattern is not new. In the year ending September 2025, the company then listed as Scenic View Transportation, now A Blessed Path, dba ReliaRide, was projected at $3,714,000 of $7,000,000, and in the year ending September 2024 it carried 30.3% of all rides, ahead of United Disability Services at 24.9% and City Yellow Cab at 20.2%. The Fitchburg Consortium is three companies, HBSS Connect, Ace Taxi Service, and MTS, that bid as one.

How fast Summit NET spending has grown

Section 177.13 of Summit County’s codified ordinances requires council approval before any one vendor is paid more than $75,000 in a calendar year without new bids, so council votes on a yearly cap for the whole group. The caps, by federal fiscal year (October to September), show the growth:

Year	Ride companies’ cap	METRO broker cap
2022 to 2023	$3,500,000, raised to $4,400,000 for calendar 2023	$670,000
2023 to 2024	$4,500,000	$350,000
2024 to 2025	$6,000,000, raised to $7,000,000	$350,000
2025 to 2026	$7,000,000, raised to $11,000,000	$500,000
2026 to 2027	$11,000,000	$500,000

Council raised the 2025 to 2026 cap on June 1, 2026 because spending had run past projections on rising transportation needs, and the 2026 to 2027 projection repeats the raised figures company by company. A cap is a ceiling, not a payment. The audit counted actual direct costs of about $4.9 million in 2023 and about $6 million in calendar 2024.

The audit also shows what the rides look like. In the year ending September 2023, 1,330 people took 93,240 one-way rides covering 636,971 miles, and rides rose to 107,550 the next year. Trips ran from 0.03 to 54.6 miles, and 46% fell between 3.4 and 9.0 miles. Riders averaged about 70 rides each, but 46% of them took 25 or fewer. Use those lengths to test any rate with the cost per trip guide.

What Summit County asks of a ride company

The bid summary filed with Resolution 2025-012 lists the service terms, and the full bid specifications are on file with the Clerk of Council:

• Riders. Ambulatory riders, and riders who can transfer to and from a vehicle on their own or with help. Rides go to Medicaid-covered appointments in or out of the county.
• Timing. Riders must arrive at least 15 minutes before the appointment, with minimal wait for the pickup home.
• What is not paid. No-shows and excessive waits. A trip counts only while the rider is in the vehicle, so price on loaded miles.
• Long trips. Rides past a set number of miles must be agreed in advance with the broker and the county NET supervisor.
• Drivers. The broker must make sure every company meets the driver training and qualification rule for ambulettes, OAC 4766-3-13: drivers 18 or older with two years of driving, fewer than six points, current CPR and first aid, a clean drug and alcohol test, a medical fitness statement, and passenger assistance training every three years. Criminal background checks follow section 109.572 of the Revised Code.
• Insurance. Broker and ride companies carry the minimums SCDJFS sets in the bid.
• Renewal. Each yearly renewal depends on state funding, council approval, and your performance.

Ohio’s county vendor checks under rule 5160-15-14 apply on top of these, and the driver background check guide covers them. The audit found that SCDJFS had no formal way to collect feedback from riders and ride companies, and it recommended one.

When Summit County bids NET again

The 2025 bid set a first year of October 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026 and two renewals. Council approved the first renewal, October 1, 2026 to September 30, 2027, on June 29, 2026. The second would run October 1, 2027 to September 30, 2028, and a new bid follows. In the last two rounds, council authorized the bid on May 23, 2022 and on January 27, 2025, each for contracts starting the next October 1, so expect a bid resolution in the first half of 2028. If the county skips the second renewal, the bid would come a year sooner.

To be ready for it:

1. Register as a bidder. Create an account in the county’s Vendor Self-Service portal through the Division of Purchasing and choose your transportation commodity codes. Registration help is at 330-643-8570.
2. Watch two places. SCDJFS posts its open bids on its Bidding Opportunities page, and council posts each NET resolution, usually through its Human Services committee, on its legislation page.
3. Decide which role you bid. The 2025 bid accepted proposals for broker services, ride services, or both. Companies can also bid together, as the Fitchburg Consortium did.
4. Build your driver files now. Have every driver meet the 4766-3-13 standards, with a current BMV record and background check, before the bid opens.
5. Choose how you price. The 2025 bids priced by the mile, by the trip, or both, and the county pays a rate it negotiates from your proposal.

Until then, health plan rides are open to you. CareSource Ohio rides go through Provide A Ride, and the Ohio guide lists the brokers for the other plans. For a county that buys from one company instead, see Cuyahoga County, next door.