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+ paratransit 3
ADAPT (305)
The Disability Rag, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER, 1987 p. 10 part 2 of article that starts in ADAPT 306 is included her in ADAPT 305 but that text is included with ADAPT 306 for easier reading. This is the second article: Title: End of September will see ADAPT in S.F. Denver. Then Washington, D.C. Then Los Angeles. Then Detroit. For the past four years, members of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit have held demonstrations during the American Public Transit Association’s annual convention, trying to get the lobbying and trade association for the public transit industry to change its mind about lifts on buses. APTA refuses to back mandatory requirements that public bus systems be accessible — instead, they promote a concept called “local option." Under “local option,” something ADAPT organizer Wade Blank has compared to “states’ rights” back in slavery days, communities should decide whether equipping a bus system's fleet with lifts is “better" for disabled people than a separate, “paratransit” system of mini-buses (often called "dial-a-ride.”) Since APTA has refused to change its position, ADAPT has continued to harass the group. Each year ADAPT’s ranks have grown. The first year ADAPT picketed APTA’s convention, in Denver, ADAPT was a local, Denver-based group of wheelchair riders. Today, there are ADAPT chapters in most major American cities. Local disability `groups` in the San Francisco Bay area are organizing for this year's convention and expect hundreds of disabled people from across the country for events beginning September 28. ADAPT’s San Francisco headquarters will be The San Franciscan Hotel, at 1231 Market Street (94103; 415-626-8000.) For more information on housing and actions for the week, contact either ADAPT in Denver at 303-393-0630, or San Francisco's September Alliance for Accessible Transit at 415-323-3736.
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The Daily Sparks Tribune April 14, 1989 page 4A [Headline] Push a wheelchair through Sparks by Andrew Barbano In all the heat generated by die wheelchair protests this week at the Sparks Nugget, the central issue has been lost: does every bus in the country need wheelchair lifts? I thought Donna Cline might shed some light on the real reason behind the ruckus. Cline, 30, was injured in a rural Nevada accident. She and Debra Donlevy were driving to Carson City late one night 11 years ago. Their car overturned near Hawthorne. Donna survived the long ride to Reno, Debbie was not so lucky. We buried her in Carson City while Cline lay in Washoe Medical Center. Debbie was my wife's daughter. Donna, who has not walked since, worked her way through broadcast school and became a television reporter. In 1985, while working at KVBC in Las Vegas, she was asked to compete for the Miss Wheelchair Nevada title. She won. And added the Miss Wheelchair America title in 1986. She took the cause of better access for the handicapped all the way to Ronald Reagan in the White House. “I leaned a lesson in it all," she told me this week from Springfield, Missouri, where she is a news co-anchor. "I found out that you'll get some awareness but you may not get what you set out to get.“ Peter Mendoza would probably agree. The unemployed Bay Area police dispatcher was here to attend the protests during the American Public Transit Association convention. He lost his job because of transportation problems, and has been protesting at APTA conventions for the past three years. “I‘m not used to being treated like a criminal,“ Mendoza says. “We're not a bunch of violent radicals. There are children here and people who’ve worked all their lives. We’re not radicals. We just want to make a point." He says that a lot of this week's problems could have been avoided. “In San Francisco, we sat down with APTA and the police and worked out the parameters of a demonstration. We even arranged for the peaceful arrest of those who thought they wanted to do so. We worked out training and helped arrange transportation. The judge sentenced those arrested to the overnight time served. There were no hard feelings. Sparks is 20 years behind the times when it comes to protests." Cline says “protest to increase awareness is wonderful but has anything more actually been accomplished? In the four cities I've live in, the demand (for wheelchair ramps) does not meet the number of buses. If you're going to take that amount of money, you should look at usage." She favors a specialized transportation system such as this area's Citilift. One caller to my radio show did not agree. "Separate is always unequal," he snapped. Mendoza, a member of the Golden Gate Bridge Highway and Transportation District‘s advisory committee on services for persons with disabilities, backs up this argument with numbers. “The Alameda-Contra Costa transit system did a study which showed a $10.84 cost per trip on a ramp-equipped bus. A paratransit system (like Citilift) costs $12.46 a trip." He says that nationally, the paratransit system is more expensive. Citilift figures bear him out. Such service is very specialized and will always cost more. “A bus ramp costs about the same as an air conditioning system, and I consider that a luxury. If you want to get rid of something that costs a lot, get rid of air conditioning." Mendoza feels specialized paratransit systems are good for rural areas, but Metropolitan areas need bus lifts. “Only three percent of the 37,000,000 disabled in this country are working and transportation is the number one reason," he passionately adds. Since I started doing talk shows, I've never had a week where one issue totally dominated as this one has. Many of my phone calls were from wheelchair users. Some Sparks residents feel that Mendoza and his group are just a bunch of out-of-town agitators who should leave. Others have accused the Sparks Police, John Ascuaga and his people of failing to defuse the situation upfront, as was done in San Francisco. Another said Nugget security guards were poorly trained and they have been the main problem. Mendoza's organization, ADAPT, almost seems to be contradicting itself by its actions. ADAPT has made its biggest gains in court and in Congress, not on the protest lines. After Congress passed a law mandating lifts on all buses, APTA got the law watered down to provide for local option. ADAPT sued and won on appeal. The protests this week centered on convincing APTA not to take its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Ironically, a small news item appeared Tuesday noting the “Disability Awareness Festival" starts April 14. Wrong. It started Sunday at the Nugget. Maybe Sparks just needs to promote better understanding. The best suggestion I've heard came from a retired Sparks Teamsters Union worker named Mitch. He suggested a handicapped awareness day where civic leaders work a day in a wheelchair to see what it's like. I like that idea. So does Donna Cline. Any takers? (Andrew Barbano is a Reno-based syndicated columnist. He host a weekday morning news and talk show an Reno AM radio station KOLO 92.) Photo: President Ronald Reagan standing, head slightly tipped to his left. Seated beside him, and coming up to about is waist, is a woman in a wheelchair with conservatively coiffed hair and attire. Both are looking at the camera and smiling. Caption reads: Donna Cline, a former Miss Wheelchair Nevada and Miss Wheelchair America, with former President Ronald Reagan.
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San Francisco September 30,1987 S.F. Independent PHOTO (right middle of page) by Rick Gerharter: At least nine wheelchair users (among them, Rick James, Stephanie Thomas, Woody Carlson, Cathy Thomas or Julie Farrar and others) fill the front of the frame blocking a bus with a sign with the APTA logo and Hotels written on it. Most of the blockers are facing toward the bus, away from the camera. Police stand on either side of the bus. Two protesters have Proud and Disabled bumper stickers on the backs of their wheelchairs. Caption: Disabled protesters blocked a SamTrans bus Monday at the American Public Transit Association convention taking place this week at Moscone Center. [Headline] Bitter Protests at Transit Meet By: Carol Farron [This story continues on a second page we do not have at this time.] Disabled people from throughout the United States are angry and have gathered in San Francisco this week to protest the lack of accessibility on public transit systems throughout the nation. The protesters are hoping to force transit officials who are convening at the annual meeting of the American Public Transit Association to change their thinking on transit accessibility for the disabled. APTA, public transit's biggest lobbying group, took the lead in the early 1980s in convincing Congress to overturn federal regulations allowing full transit accessibility for the disabled. What resulted from that decision was a "local option" plan. This allowed individual transit agencies to decide if they would provide accessibility for the disabled on fixed route service or an alternate van/taxi service. Many disabled `groups` are unhappy with that outcome, charging that the local option denies them their civil rights and impedes or prohibits their ability to attend school or hold down jobs because of a lack of transportation. Additionally, many disabled say that paratransit is a paternalistic system that segregates them from society, and users are made to feel helpless. APTA members contend that full accessibility is expensive and unworkable. They say that equipping buses and trains with lifts is too expensive given the number of disabled riders. The disabled, however, say that transit's estimates of disabled riders are low, and accessible transit can work as cities like Seattle, San Francisco and Denver have proven. More than 200 wheelchair bound men and women said last Saturday at a press conference that because the current regulations deny them their civil rights they came prepared to be arrested - and that they were. Thirty-four people, most in wheelchairs, were arrested at a City Hall protest last Sunday, and another 22 were arrested in for blocking a Samtrans bus at Moscone Center on Monday. Many more arrests are expected until the convention's conclusion this Thursday. "This is a militant bunch of protestors," said Jack Gilstrap, executive vice president of APTA. "These people terrified and roughed up some of our members at city hall. "Just because someone is in a wheelchair doesn't mean they're nice." Marilyn Golden of SAAT, the September Alliance for Accessible Transit, said her group is "far from militant." see Rides, page 2