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Staartsäit / Albumen / Schlagwuert San Antonio 20
- ADAPT (478)
San Antonio says no to lifts, loses major disability meet This article is a continuation of the one on 463, and the entire text is included there, for ease of reading. - ADAPT (463)
San Antonio, read their lips: “No lifts, no $1.6 million convention. [This story is continued on 478 but it is included here in its entirety for ease of reading.] The President's Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities will not hold its annual convention in San Antonio in 1991 because that city has no mainline accessible transit and no plans to introduce any. Instead, the meeting will be held in Dallas, which has 100 lift-equipped buses and plans to introduce more. It is estimated that the meeting, which will attract 4,000 to 5,000 people, would have brought at least $1.6 million to San Antonio. Committee chairman Harold Russell said he was informed of San Antonio's position on accessible public transit in January by Wayne Cook, general manager of VIA, San Antonio's transit system. Russell said the committee's decision was in keeping with President Bush's promise to bring the 37 million Americans with disabilities into the economic work force. "Disabled Americans must become full partners in America's opportunity society,” the President told Congress. In order to make the President's vision a reality, Russell said mainline accessible public transit has to be an option for people with disabilities who want to join the work force. “We have found that, next to attitudes, lack of accessible transportation is the most important significant barrier to employment of people with disabilities," Russell said. "There are 8.2 million people with disabilities of working age in this country who are unemployed but who can work and want to work. That's a terrible waste of talent, and it's not fair to the people who are prevented from working." Russell said his committee's mission to help people with disabilities find employment would be compromised if they held their annual meeting in San Antonio. "The issue is not transportation for people who attend our meeting," he said. “It’s everyday access to mainline transit for people with any kind of disability who "want to work and can work.” The committee's credibility was at stake, he added. Russell expressed his regret about the move. “San Antonio is a beautiful city, with wonderful people. The mayor and members of the city administration are working very hard to make the city accessible to everyone. Maybe we can come to San Antonio at a later date, when VIA's policy has changed.” Kent Waldrep, chairman of the Texas Governor's Committee for Disabled Persons, supported the decision to move the convention to Dallas. “This is one way that those of us who work in the disability field can support the goal of employment. We're not saying that every transit system needs to make all of their vehicles accessible right away,” he said. “We do think that transit operators should make an honest effort to begin that process, though. A system like San Antonio's that requires advance notice to travel just won't work for active people with disabilities who work-and shop and do all the things other people do. It’s not fair to riders or to their employers, who can't ask them ‘to travel around the city on short notice in the course of their work.” Waldrep also pointed out that in the long run accessible mainline ‘service would be far more economical than relying solely on the current paratransit system. “It doesn't make sense to make people who would rather ride mainline buses use a system that costs the taxpayers $13.50 for every ride. Why not save the heavily subsidized rides for those people who really need them?" Waldrep suggested that if everybody who is eligible to use the paratransit system in San Antonio did so, VIA wouldn't be able to pay the bill. “In the long run, putting lifts on buses will save money,” he said, "as well as being the right thing to do.” In response to the decision by the President's committee, the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities (CTD) announced" that CTD has is cancelling plans to hold its annual meeting in San Antonio. CTD president Larry Correu said that his group has met with VIA over the years to discuss the system ’s reluctance to provide accessible mainline service. He pointed out that VIA has been under a court order since 1985 to supply such service. “Maybe if CTD and a lot of other state and national organizations refuse to hold their meetings in San Antonio, they'll understand how serious the issue is,” he said. Correu said he has learned that several other organizations were also planning on boycotting San Antonio. - ADAPT (599)
PHOTO: An African American woman in a motorized wheelchair sits in front of a group of other people in wheelchairs and standing. Several are wearing ADAPT no stairs logo T-shirts. The woman in front has a sign across the front of the wheelchair that says "Access Now. We will Ride." They are on a city street in an urban downtown area. Caption says: SINCE 1983, ADAPT has picketed APTA is national and regional conventions, always an unwelcome guest. Scores of demonstrators have been arrested hundreds of times as they blocked the entrances to APTA's various hotel headquarters in such cities, as Denver, Detroit, Montreal, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, San Antonio, and Reno. Only once, in Denver in 1983, was ADAPT allowed to make its plea for accessible public transit before an APTA meeting, and then only after the city's mayor, Federico Pena, intervened. APTA insisted throughout the demonstrations that they weren't opposed to lifts per se, only to making the lifts mandatory on all public transit systems. APTA argued that it was a matter best decided by local transit providers. - ADAPT (596)
Page 8-A EXPRESS-NEWS, San Antonio, Texas, Tuesday, February 14, 1939 [Headline] Federal court order could have impact on VIA budget Complied from Staff and Wire Reports INSERTED QUOTE: “ The impact of the majority‘s decision will be very substantial throughout the country and will interfere with the local decision-making authority. I feel the court is overreaching." - Judge Morton Greenberg PHILADELPHIA — A court order Monday requiring the US Department of Transportation to require transit authorities to equip new buses with wheelchair lifts could have a significant impact on the budget of San Antonio's VIA Metropolitan Transit. Attorneys who brought the lawsuit that led to the ruling called it the most important decision ever handed down for handicapped people needing public transportation. Carol Ketcherside, assistant for governmental affairs to VIA manager Wayne Cook, said the wheelchair lifts add at least $15,000 to the cost of a new bus. The average life-time of a VIA bus is 12 years, she said, and when the expense is spread across a fleet of 500 buses, the cost for lifts "would be significant." The $15,000 cost does not include the cost for maintaining the lifts or for refitting bus stops to make them accessible, she said. All bus stops being built by VIA currently are accessible, however. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Monday a Transportation Department regulation requiring all new buses to accommodate wheelchairs conflicts with another allowing communities to offer only an alternative service, such as special vans to the handicapped, which VIA offers. The court said a rule requiring reservations 24 hours in advance for use of the alternative transportation hinders the spontaneous use of mass transit by the handicapped. As a result, the court ordered transit authorities to make "reasonable accommodations to their programs, i.e. purchase wheelchair-accessible buses." The court also upheld a controversial decision requiring the Transportation Department to eliminate a cap on the amount of money transit authorities need to spend on making transportation accessible. A federal judge ordered VIA in 1985 to upgrade its services for the handicapped following a class action suit brought in 1983. The bus company's response was to create VIAtrans, a fleet of specially equipped vans that provide service to the handicapped who give advance notice. Ketcherside also said VIA already spends more than the 3 percent maximum the Transportation Department can require for its accessibility programs. "We far exceed the requirements of the federal government" she said. She said VIA will have to wait to see whether the Transportation Department will appeal the ruling or issue new regulations in accordance with the appeals court order to determine how it will affect the transit company. A coalition of disabled people and 12 organizations called Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation (ADAPT) filed the lawsuit last year that led to the appeals court decision. ADAPT contended that a provision of the federal regulations allowed authorities receiving federal transportation funds to exclude the handicapped from "effective and meaningful" access. The provision allows transit authorities to decide among three types of handicapped-accessible transportation: accessible buses, vans for the handicapped, or combination of the two. U.S. District Judge Marvin Katz overturned the provision in cases where the transit authority buys any buses. He also overturned a regulation requiring authorities to spend no more than 3 percent -- of their average annual operating budget on transportation for the handicapped. Katz called the limit arbitrary and said it allowed transit agencies "to eviscerate the civil right" to transit service that Congress mandated for the handicapped. Circuit Judge Carol Las Mansmann in writing the 2-1 opinion also cited Congress' intent. "Congress wanted to provide the disabled with the capability to utilize mass transit to the 'maximum extent feasible.' The DOT has failed to show that requiring the future purchase of accessible buses oversteps this legislative intent." Mansmann wrote. In a dissenting opinion, Judge Morton Greenberg said the section requiring new buses to be accessible was not meant to apply to transit systems choosing paratransit system, such as special vans. He also [said] the 3 percent cap was not arbitrary. “ The impact of the majority‘s decision will be very substantial throughout the country and will interfere with the local decision-making authority," Greenberg wrote, "I feel the court is overreaching." Timothy Gold [Cook] who argued the case before the court, said the ruling was “a major, major victory for the handicapped community ... we can't say enough positve things about it." Gold [Cook], who is now director of the Washington-based National Disability Action Center, said he hoped the ruling would not be appealed in light of President Bush's recent comments about wanting to bring the handicapped into the mainstream." - ADAPT (582)
Weekly Reader Senior Edition Volume 44, Issue 8, November 3. 1989 PHOTO (by Roberta Barnes/San Antonio Light): A group of marchers, nine are visible but there appear to be more behind them, most in wheelchairs, roll toward the camera. In seems to be windy and sunny and they are on a downtown sidewalk. In the center a man with a busy head of hair and salt and pepper beard (Bob Kafka) rolls his manual chair as he shouts; behind him is a large ADAPT flag. He wears an ADAPT shirt with the no steps logo, suspenders and blue jeans; across is legs is a sign reading "victims of inappropriate accessibility" and he has a bag or something stuffed between his feet. He is looking to his right and a woman in a power chair in a white dress and dark sunglasses looks back at him with a slight smile. She seems to have a parasol. On his left is a man in a motored wheelchair (Hector Saenz) in a button down shirt and suit pants is rolling with him and also yelling. In the row behind them you can see two women in dark sunglasses and dresses walking and carrying posters, one reads "LIFTS NOT LIES." Between Bob and Hector you can see the line goes back and a man with dark hair and a beard (Frank Lozano) is visible pushing another person in a wheelchair. Between the marchers street signs "speed limit 20", "merge left" and a pedestrian crossing sign, are visible. Caption in large print reads: DISABLED AMERICANS WIN RIGHTS See story, pages 4 and 5