THE DENVER POST THURSDAY, FEB. 25, 1982

METRO
Two photos by The Denver Post / Jim Richardson.
First: A small meeting room filled with tables set classroom style with white table cloths. Three rows face away from the camera toward the front of the room, and at the far end of the room four or five people face the camera and their audience. The more than a dozen people at the tables facing the front of the room are in wheelchairs.
Caption reads: Representatives of Denver's handicapped community meet Wednesday with RTD officials.
Second photo [on right side of story]: A tall thin man in a suit and tie, with a smile on his face, pushes a manual wheelchair through the aisles between tables.
Caption reads: A wheelchair is presented to L.A. Kimball, RTD executive director.

RTD Chief Is Given Wheelchair
Handicapped Want Official to Experience Bus Problems First
By JUDITH BRIMBERG
Denver Post Staff writer

To promote sensitivity “from the top," Denver's disabled community on Wednesday gave RTD‘s executive director, L. A. Kimball, a wheelchair and urged he ride the bus in it at least once a week.

Kimball accepted the chair “in that good spirit“ and promised to use it as time allows. He refused to tell reporters exactly when he would simulate the plight of the handicapped.

The exchange occurred at the first of a series of meetings mandated by a court settlement of a dispute between RTD and some handicapped Denver residents. More than 80 handicapped people or their representatives attended the session, held at the Plaza Cosmopolitan Hotel in downtown Denver.

The handicapped had objected to the transit agency's reversal of a decision to install wheelchair lifts on 89 articulated buses which will go into service next year, pointing out federal funds are available to pay 80 percent of the cost.

Those funds will remain unspent. Until RTD decides upon another operational use for them or the federal government takes the money back. Kimball has acknowledged.

Wednesday, in a conciliatory gesture, Kimball announced that the transit agency was deferring plans to phase out its HandiRide for at least six months.
Please See ATLANTIS on 6-B

Created on

Wednesday 10 July 2013

Posted on

Tuesday 10 May 2016

Tags

articulated buses, broken promise, Handi-Ride, inaccessible, LA Kimball, plight, wheelchair

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