{"id":1374,"date":"2005-02-25T01:05:28","date_gmt":"2005-02-25T09:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/02\/25\/whats-wrong-with-paratransit-and-why\/"},"modified":"2005-02-25T01:05:28","modified_gmt":"2005-02-25T09:05:28","slug":"whats-wrong-with-paratransit-and-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=1374","title":{"rendered":"What's wrong with Paratransit – and why"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting article in Ragged Edge about paratransit<\/a> (public-transportion vans that provide taxi services for the disabled), and how it sucks. What got my attention is the article’s description of how structural factors create a strong incentive <\/i>for public transport officials to keep paratransit as sucky as possible:<\/p>\n

Anyone who met these criteria had to be allowed to ride paratransit, the law said. Paratransit now had to meet federal criteria as well, so bus companies could no longer legally restrict ridership as they had in decades past.<\/p>\n

And ridership mushroomed.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, what ADAPT had been saying during the 1980s began to sink in, as managers of the nation’s bus services began to realize that it was far more costly to provide paratransit, which was essentially a taxi service, than to run a lift-outfitted bus along a fixed route, with people getting on and off as they chose. A wheelchair lift was a onetime capital cost. Paratransit costs were ongoing, and rose whenever a new rider entered the system.<\/p>\n

And so, in the 14 years since federal law required that disabled people be allowed paratransit, bus companies have worked to do all they can within the law — and quite often, outside the law — to “make it as unpleasant as possible to ride it, so you will crawl to the regular bus service.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although the article is focused on Louisville, I’ve heard similar complaints about the paratransit service here in Portland. The article suggests this is a nationwide problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting article in Ragged Edge about paratransit (public-transportion vans that provide taxi services for the disabled), and how it sucks. What got my attention is the article’s description of how structural factors create a strong incentive for public transport … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disabled-rights-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}