Officials from the North Central Texas Council of Governments met residents and representatives from local organizations in Greenville on Tuesday.
The meeting was the first of 16 county-by-county outreach events happening throughout the council's member area between fall 2016 and summer 2017.
The 50-year-old county council plans to update a 2013 transportation plan next year and implement it across the areas it serves in early 2018.
Kelli Schlicher, ?a transportation planner, told KETR that the council was focusing on how to help agencies better coordinate services offered in different counties.
"It's not only a concern here in the rural area," Schlicher said. "Agencies receive certain types of funding to find their programs. And oftentimes that's within the county or within the city."
She added that some elderly, disabled and low-income residents eligible for transportation services did not know they existed, or how to find their schedules.
One of those residents, Kathryn Foote, told Schlisher and others at the Greenville meeting that she feared losing access to family and healthcare.
"My doctor tells me that as my neuropathy gets worse, that eventually I won't be able to walk at all. And I'll be in a wheelchair," Foote told KETR. "If I can't drive my car, then I'll have to take the bus. And if the bus doesn't go out of Hunt County ... how can I go visit my family?"
Foote added that she did not have access to the Internet in her home. Only at the council meeting did she learn that buses do in fact leave Hunt County in certain situations.
Schlicher, the transportation coordinator, said Foote's lack of access to information underscored the council's need to expand its outreach methods.
"It seems as though the main concern was getting the information about available resources here, and getting that in a variety of forms," Schlicher said. "Not only having stuff on the website but diversifying ... Having pamphlets at the local libraries within the cities, or within grocery stores, even."
The North Central Texas Council of Governments is made up of 16 neighboring counties in northern Texas. It was created in 1966 to resolve shared problems.
Its Access North Texasregional transportation plan was approved in 2013.