What was Mayor Bloomberg thinking when Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat from Iowa, called to discuss NYC’s inaccessible choice for the Taxi of Tomorrow?
The Senator, the prime ADA sponsor in the Senate back in 1990, knows a discriminatory practice when he sees one. Even better, Tom Harkin doesn’t have to “believe” accessible taxis could work in a “hail a cab” system like NYC yellow cabs, he’d seen it work in London, where all taxis are wheelchair accessible.
Mayor Bloomberg and his Taxi and Limousine Commissioners, first Matthew Daus and now David Yassky, have been fumbling with a dispatch program for several years for the 231 accessible cabs out of 13,000 yellow cabs. Daus’s plan was abandoned a year ago and has been replaced by nothing––but the TLC says something’s coming. That plan could not be articulated by the City’s lawyer when attempting unsuccessfully to get our suit dismissed, which alleges, among other things, that when City government decided to ignore needs and rights, and exclude wheelchair users from the Taxi of Tomorrow by not mandating that accessibility be a design standard, that Bloomberg/Yassky violated various civil rights laws, including the ADA.
Bloomberg probably doesn’t question his own civil rights credentials; after all, he was a champion of gay marriage. But if you believe, as I believe, that everything newly built should be accessible to everyone, then Bloomberg’s choice not to require design submissions in the Taxi of Tomorrow competition to be accessible was a discriminatory practice. That offensive behavior was compounded by the choice of an inaccessible Nissan taxi design instead of an accessible Karsan taxi design.
In 2011 it is still acceptable to overtly discriminate against people with disabilities while promoting the rights of other minorities and be considered progressive. Right there with the Mayor is City Council President Christine Quinn, who, gay herself, also championed the rights of gays to marry but does not support a bill introduced in City Council to require all new taxis to be accessible.
So what was the Mayor thinking? “Who does this guy from Iowa think he is, telling me about NYC’s taxi system?” The Senator wrote the Mayor last winter suggesting that he choose an accessible design. The Mayor did not reply. So maybe he was thinking “Who did I tell to respond to Harkin and why didn’t they?” Or maybe, “Why can’t we make a single decision around here without hearing from someone who’s aggrieved? After all, we had good reasons for not requiring cabs to be accessible. Somebody tell me the reasons.”
James Weisman
SVP & General Counsel
United Spinal Association
