TRIPIL Web Article Archives

Still Not Equal - We Will Ride

Article By: Observer Reporter
Published: 1998-07-26
By: Joe Smydo and Stan Diamond

Article has been reformatted for archival purposes.

For Mike Auberger, as for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., it all began with buses.

King led the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955, and Auberger is a leader of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation.

Throughout the 1980s, ADAPT members blocked buses, crashed transportation industry conventions and took over U.S. Department of Transportation offices to call attention to the need for wheelchair-accessible buses.

"We did a lot of different kinds of things, and it was all modeled on the civil rights movement of the '60s and the anti-war demonstrations," Auberger said.

After all that fighting, the battle for affordable, accessible transportation has not yet been won. The 8-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act requires buses be made accessible, but people with disabilities still struggle to get from place to place, and find their opportunities for employment and recreation limited as a result.

The transportation problem is acute in rural areas that have little or no bus service, a description that applies to most of Washington and Greene counties.

Curtis Marcase has enough vision to putter about his 38-acre farm in East Finley Township, but he cannot see well enough to drive. When his wife, Sandy, or a neighbor are unavailable to play chauffeur, Marcase has no way off the farm, which he likened to an "island."

A visitor must leave Route 231 and travel 1 1/4 miles up a rutted, dusty, gravel road to reach the farm. There is no bus service in these parts, and calling a cab from Washington 20 miles away would be a big expense.

"In today's society, especially Washington County, if you have a vision handicap, if you don't live in town, you don't go anywhere," Marcase said.

Marcase raises Christmas trees, honey bees and three varieties of sheep. He likes the tranquility of farm life and refuses to give it up for better access to transportation.

"If I lived in the city, what would I do with my life?" he said. "My life would be very hollow. There's nothing in there that would interest me at all."

Most of the year, Marcase works about 25 hours a week at Washington-Greene County Blind Association in Washington, making suture-removal kits and tracheostomy-care kits for Veterans Administration hospitals.

Sandy Marcase, a night custodian for the Ringgold School District, has to get up early when it's her day to drive. Before the neighbor began helping out, she did all the driving.

"It's hard on me, but I do it," she said. She kids her husband, "You can't get rid of me. You have to depend on me."

Marcase once used a pilot transportation program that Washington County officials operated with a three-year, $1.2 million federal grant. The program, designed to get people with disabilities to their jobs, ended when the money ran out.

Until three months ago, Jim Clark's life was similarly limited by a lack of transportation.

The Waynesburg resident spent a year saving for a vehicle, a van with a wheelchair lift.

He isn't able to drive the van, but his attendants use it to take him where he wants to go, when he wants to go. Clark, who works part time in the Greene County elections office, has not always had such freedom.

Before he bought the van, he had two options for getting around town. He could go in his motorized wheelchair or take a van service operated by the county.

Subsidized by the Pennsylvania Lottery, the van service offers discounted rates to senior citizens, but not to residents with disabilities under 65. For anyone under the age limit, a round trip of only a few blocks costs $12, a hardship considering many disabled people are poor.

Cost isn't the only drawback. The service doesn't operate evenings or weekends.

Meanwhile, Waynesburg has no bus service, and Clark was unable to take a taxi or have a friend drive him because his wheelchair, which he operates by sipping and puffing on a straw-like device, cannot be folded and put in a car.

In all, about 91,000 disabled Pennsylvanians between the ages of 16 and 64 live in areas without bus service and "find their lives seriously limited" as a result, according to the Pennsylvania Transportation Alliance.

The alliance, made up of various disability rights organizations, wants the Legislature to establish a subsidized transportation program for people with disabilities -- similar to the lottery-funded service for senior citizens.

If a person with a disability needed a ride to work, the mall or a friend's house, he would call the program and make a reservation. The rider would pay a nominal amount.

The alliance wants the Legislature to allocate at least $4 million annually for the program and has suggested funding it with a surcharge on auto insurance premiums or with proceeds from slot machines, should the Legislature legalize that form of entertainment.

In September 1995, more than 200 disability rights activists rolled their wheelchairs through a section of Harrisburg to call attention to the need for rural transportation. They called the event a Freedom Ride, the term that civil rights activists gave to the interstate bus trips organized in 1961 to protest segregation at Southern bus terminals.

The alliance also has approached state lawmakers to request funding for the program, and advocates see their work beginning to pay off.

State Sen. James Rhoades, R-Schuylkill County, has introduced a bill that would set up pilot transportation programs for the disabled in various counties. The $15 million for the project would come from the general fund.

Many residents with disabilities receive medical assistance and can ride in county vans to doctor's appointments for free. But the doctor's office is the only place the medical card will take them.

It's a vicious cycle, people with disabilities say. Without transportation, they cannot get jobs. Without jobs, they cannot raise themselves from poverty and achieve the independence that is the goal of the disability rights movement.

To understand how people with disabilities feel, Marcase said, a nondisabled person need only throw his driver's license in the trash.

"Where can you go from Washington without your driver's license?" he said.

People with disabilities sometimes have difficulty getting around even in urban or suburban areas that have bus service.

The ADA requires transit systems to buy wheelchair-accessible buses as older vehicles are retired. By now, many of these carriers have wheelchair lifts on their buses.

The ADA further requires the carriers to have "paratransit" programs for people with disabilities who cannot ride buses. These programs, which offer van and cab rides, also are in place in many cities.

From time to time, however, transit systems are thought to violate the ADA in some way -- and advocacy agencies step in to teach them a lesson.

Disabilities Law Project sued Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority in 1995, claiming the transit service was selling tokens and tickets at inaccessible locations.

SEPTA settled the suit, agreeing to no longer enter into contracts with inaccessible stores and to terminate existing contracts with retailers that did not become accessible within a year, according to a report by Pennsylvania Protection and Advocacy Inc. The law project is a subcontractor of PP&A, part of the congressionally mandated network of disability rights organizations.

In 1994, the law project sued Capitol Area Transit Inc. in Harrisburg, citing "routine delays," "excessive trip lengths" and other problems with the paratransit program.

Under a settlement, CAT agreed to give free rides to those who experience the kinds of problems cited in the suit more than once a month. CAT also agreed to give its drivers training to make them more sensitive to the needs of riders with disabilities, according to the advocates.

Officials at SEPTA and CAT did not return calls seeking comment about the lawsuits.

Advocacy Inc., the Texas protection and advocacy agency, sued the city of San Antonio and VIA Metropolitan Transit Authority in 1994. The suit alleged multiple violations of the ADA, including inaccessible bus stops; an inaccessible station; and delays and other problems with VIA's paratransit.

Under a settlement last year, the parties agreed on a timetable for making 95 bus stops accessible. VIA agreed to make the station more accessible by changing the grading at one entrance; putting an accessible table in the snack bar; and widening rest room stalls, P&A attorney Garth Corbett said.

The parties also established standards for evaluating the performance of the paratransit program. For example, they agreed that paratransit vehicles should be on time for 80 percent of all trips, and they decided that only 10 percent of ride requests could be denied because of scheduling problems, Corbett said.

David Frost, ADA coordinator and accessible services planner for VIA, said paratransit is inherently inefficient because it involves coordinating the travel schedules of individual riders. Traditionally, he said, the transit system has set the schedule and required passengers to adjust.

Paratransit also is expensive, Frost said, noting the average one-way trip costs VIA $17 to $18 per passenger. That's about six times more than it costs to transport a person by bus, but VIA isn't allowed to charge a paratransit rider more than twice the cost of a comparable bus trip, Frost said.

Frost said he did not believe it was necessary for Advocacy Inc. to sue VIA. And he said some of the group's demands -- that VIA speed up the purchase of accessible buses, for example -- had no basis in law and did not become part of the settlement.

Because Greyhound Lines Inc. doesn't have lifts on its buses, Bob Milan would have to be carried aboard.

Like cargo. Like a child. Like hell.

ADAPT says its protests during the 1980s led to the transportation provisions in the ADA.

Like it does local buses, the ADA requires over-the-road coaches be accessible. To bring Greyhound into compliance, ADAPT has embarked on a fresh round of protests.

ADAPT members surrounded the company's Washington, D.C., terminal in June 1997 and blocked 20 buses. "For 3 1/2 hours, they went nowhere," Auberger said.

Days later, ADAPT members converged on the U.S. Department of Transportation offices to demand the agency crack down on Greyhound. They also demanded an audience with Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater.

In August, activists descended on 40 Greyhound terminals nationwide. About three dozen people, including a dozen from Washington and Greene counties, protested for three hours at the Pittsburgh terminal.

One protester unfurled a U.S. flag that had been modified for just such an occasion. The stars in the upper left corner of the flag formed a picture of a figure in a wheelchair.

Milan and a few other protesters went into the terminal with tickets for Bus 2213, bound for Monroeville, to see how Greyhound would deal with passengers in wheelchairs.

When an employee told the ticket-holders they would have to be lifted onto the bus, they declined to ride.

"There it is: 2213 -- the bus we're not going to ride," Milan said, gazing out into the terminal where the bus was parked.

Milan, president of Tri-County Patriots for Independent Living Washington, said Greyhound discriminates against the disability community when it wouldn't dare do so to black people.

Greyhound spokeswoman Katherine Williams said the company isn't discriminating against anyone.

She said Greyhound is experimenting with various kinds of bus-based and station-based lifts. For example, she said the company recently purchased 20 buses with lifts and is testing them on runs between Dallas and Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, Williams said, some employees receive special training on how to carry passengers with disabilities onto buses. The company also allows the attendants of those passengers to ride for free.

The ADA called for Greyhound and other interstate carriers to begin making their vehicles accessible in 1996.

Williams said Congress extended the deadline because the Department of Transportation had not yet issued regulations for over-the-road carriers to follow.

Disability rights activists maintain that the bus industry lobbied for the additional time and that Greyhound has the extension to buy more inaccessible buses. Because the buses last 20 years, they say, Greyhound may remain inaccessible for another generation.

Greyhound isn't the only interstate carrier without lifts, but it's the biggest and most important, hence the attention from ADAPT, Auberger said. Greyhound offered 244 million miles of regularly scheduled service to 2,400 destinations in 1995 -- twice the destinations served by U.S. airlines and Amtrak.

In March, the Department of Transportation proposed regulations that would require Greyhound and other major over-the-road carriers to make their entire fleets accessible by 2012. Smaller over-the-road carriers would have to begin making their fleets accessible, too, though the requirements for those companies will be somewhat less stringent, department attorney Bob Ashby said.

Williams says Greyhound objects to the government's proposal to make every vehicle accessible. She said the company's idea is to have a pool of accessible vehicles that would be moved around as needed, an arrangement that would require passengers with disabilities to give Greyhound 48 hours' notice before riding.

ADAPT wants every bus to be accessible, and activists vow to keep the heat on Greyhound. At protests, group members brandish signs and hand out leaflets that say, "We will ride that dirty dog."

-- End of Part 5

Other Parts of the Story

• Part 1. Freedom Fighters:
  The disability rights movement is a struggle for independence, respect and equality. And that fight is far from over.
• Part 2. Access is a Civil Right:
  People with disabilities encounter barriers daily.
• Part 3. No Place Like Home:
  Disability rights advocates want to replace the hodgepodge of state programs with a national attendant care initiative.
• Part 4. Peers, not Classmates:
  Children with disabilities find themselves fighting for equal opportunities in the classroom.
• Part 5. 'We Will Ride':
  Transportation remains an acute problem, especially in rural areas.
• Part 6. Myths and stereotypes:
  People with disabilities are fighting attitudinal barriers, as well.
• Return to Main Article

Behind the Story

• Reporter Joe Smydo, 28, graduated from Washington and Jefferson College in 1991 with a degree in history. He was a staff writer at The Pittsburgh Press before joinging the O-R in June 1993. He covers county government and politics and has won Keystone and Golden Quill awards.
• Photographer Stan Diamond, 55, is a native of Burgettstown who began his career in 1966 in the Greene County Bureau in Waynesburg. He was a general assignment reporter and the bureau's primary photographer. In 1985, he transferred to the Washington office as a photographer. He has won several Keystone Press awards for his photography.

Copyright

Copyright © 1998 Observer Publishing Co. - Republished with permission