Rocky Mountain News Friday, May 7, 1982

All RTD routes to serve disabled
By Jerry Brown
News-Staff

Regional Transportation District officials plan to provide wheelchair-accessible service on all RTD routes beginning next month, fulfilling a commitment made three years ago.

“As far as I know, we are the first in the country to get this far,” in providing bus service for the physically handicapped, said district spokeswoman Kathy Joyce.

About 150 rides a week currently are taken by handicapped passengers on the 10 routes in Denver, two in Boulder and all routes in Longmont that offer wheelchair-accessible service, Joyce said, with a peak weekly ridership of 270.

The expansion of accessible service follows completion of the installation of wheelchair lifts on 186 AM General buses purchased by RTD in 1977 and 1978. RTD purchased 127 new buses from General Motors of Canada, and RTD also has 33 older buses that had been previously equipped with lifts, giving the agency 346 lift-equipped buses out of a total fleet of 671.

RTD spent $3,882,222 - or $20,872 per bus - retrofitting the AM General buses, Joyce said.

RTD doesn't have cost figures for the lifts on the new buses, which were delivered early last year. The cost of lifts on those buses was included in the $15.5 million purchase price, Joyce said.

Beginning June 6, half of all rush-hour buses and all off-peak buses will be wheelchair accessible, RTD Executive Director L.A. Kimball said.

Wade Blank, co-director of the Atlantis Community for the handicapped, said his organization is pleased with the proposed new service. RTD also has promised a public relations program to promote the new service, another longtime Atlantis goal, Blank said.

Atlantis filed a lawsuit in 1977 and staged a series of demonstrations in 1977, 1978 and 1979 in efforts to force RTD to make its regular routes accessible to the handicapped.

In mid-1979, RTD agreed to make all its routes wheelchair accessible after the U.S. Department of Transportation issued national regulations requiring that half of all rush-hour buses be wheelchair-accessible by July 1982.

The federal regulations were rescinded last year, but RTD agreed to meet its earlier commitment, anyway.

Earlier Atlantis held more demonstrations to protest RTD’s decision not to put wheelchair lifts on 89 new buses scheduled for delivery next year. Atlantis is challenging that decision in Denver District Court.

RTD became one of the first transit agencies in the United States to offer wheelchair-accessible service on regular routes last June when it began providing such service on some of its busier routes.

Created on

Wednesday 10 July 2013

Posted on

Tuesday 10 May 2016

Tags

accessible bus routes, Atlantis Community, cost, Denver RTD, DOT regulations, LA Kimball, physically handicapped, PR campaign, rescinded regs, Wade Blank, wheelchair lifts

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