The NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission recently announced that the two-year $1 million program to provide dispatch service to New York City wheelchair users was a failure. According to TLC head David Yassky, “Generally the program was very expensive and unfortunately not well-utilized.”
James Weisman, United Spinal’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel responded to Mr. Yassky with the following:
I read your article about the accessible taxi program which inappropriately used the word “incredibly” to characterize its failure.
Accessible taxis would substantially reduce the MTA’s staggering $450 million Access a Ride per year cost as trips could be made using taxis at far less cost to MTA than their current $66 fare. Last month 100,000 trips were made on lift equipped buses in NYC by wheelchair/motorized scooter users. Most of these trips were peak hour, i.e., work trips. There is a rapidly growing community of aging, active people who need access.
Years ago MTA made a poor choice – provide only minimal access to NYC’s subway system for those with mobility impairments and use Access a Ride as the workhorse for interborough transportation. MTA has steadily eliminated interborough bus service because ridership on those lines is lower than normal. Most able-bodied NYers use the subway for longer trips. Those that need lift equipped buses because of lack of subway access are forced to call Access a Ride. Access a Ride, because of The Americans with Disabilities Act’s mandate, must meet demand. It cannot just cut its budget and deny service to those who cannot use mass transit, the service must be available.
The MTA and the TLC did not jointly consider people with disabilities until this year despite Access a Ride’s costs.
TLC Commissioner Yassky inherited a doomed accessible taxi “pilot program” for all the reasons that, if you were at the hearing, you disregarded when you wrote your piece.
- No marketing to people with disabilities
- The ridiculous Blackberry system which required drivers to pull over to reply in writing to a request for an accessible cab within 2 minutes (impossible many times and hard to explain when already carrying a fare)
- Requiring drivers to travel for free to a pickup which, because only 230, or so, taxis out of 13,000 are accessible, was rarely proximate
Moreover, the TLC’s Taxi of Tomorrow program doesn’t mandate accessibility, may result in a ten year deal to perpetuate inaccessibility if the Commissioner doesn’t choose wisely which will further burden Access a Ride, and will stifle creative design for a decade.
United Spinal trained these drivers for the TLC. Apparently, they want us to continue even though there is no plan to allow people with disabilities to do anything to find an accessible cab except to get out there and hail one like everyone else, accept unlike everyone else they can only access 230 out of 13,000 cabs. They can and will continue to call Access a Ride.
Sadly, MTA was not at the hearing. They are about to spend $45 million to renovate Dyckman Street Station and are not including elevators because the agency did not designate Dyckman a “key” station when it did its ADA compliance plan. The same ADA requires an amount equal to 20% of renovation costs to be spent on accessibility in non key stations renovated in the ordinary course of business, including level change mechanisms (ramps, elevators). MTA has ignored this requirement for years and it only increases Access a Ride costs.
MTA, TLC and people with disabilities must work together to solve problems because transportation planning without employing principles of universal design will burden government with unnecessarily “special needs” and dependency budgets for generations.
