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[Headline] Zealots on Wheels

Every year the American Public Transit Association (APTA) meets to discuss the vagaries of American mass transit, and every year a group of protesters for American Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation (ADAPT) stages a protest. People in wheelchairs park themselves in front of and other transit vehicles, and wait to be carted away by the local constabulary. The idea is to generate public sympathy for handicapped people implying that transit authorities callously neglect their needs.

The tactic hasn't worked. Instead, ADAPT become one of those organizations, like rabid animal-rights groups that torture animals and blame medical researchers, that does more harm then good to its cause. The sad part is that ADAPT theoretically supports a good cause--ensuring that handicapped citizens have access to public transportation — but takes its crusade to an absurd extreme.

ADAPT doesn't seek mere access to transportation. It wants "100-percent" access to all buses, subways, light rail cars, and other public conveyances. That means all buses would have to be fitted with hydraulic lifts for wheelchairs; all subway stations built with elevators; all rail cars constructed either with lifts or special "at grade" doors, etc.

Such goodies inflate capital costs enormously, without providing equivalent benefits. Hydraulic lifts on buses, for instance, have a notorious record for breaking down — and they cost $15,000-20,000 per bus. And elevators on subways, which often cost tremendous amounts of money, go generally unused in cities like Washington and New York because they have become favorite haunts for muggers.

In truth, there are many cheaper and more effective ways to grant access to transportation than to redesign every bus and train in America. Some cities, including Detroit, have special programs for carrying handicapped citizens from place to place. Others offer cab rides. Although these programs don't offer handicapped citizens the privilege of being mugged on empty buses, they do move people from point to point — which, after all, is the purpose of public transit.

ADAPT's hysterical invocation of "rights" bears striking similarity to similarly excessive demands for "handicapped rights" in other areas. A good ex-ample occurred almost a decade ago, when a judge in North Carolina ordered a state university to lim-it the height of shelves to 3 feet in a new campus library. The idea was to allow all handicapped citizens to reach their own books that is, to en-joy "100 percent access." The stipulation also would have in-creased the cost of building the library by more than 100 percent. Common sense fortunately prevailed when some-one pointed out that the library could hire students to retrieve books for handicapped students, and for far less than it would cost to expand the library and purchase new shelves.

ADAPT could learn from this example. If the judge had prevailed in North Carolina, the library might never have been built. Similarly, if someone demanded lifts on all buses, cities would have to cut back on transit services, which wouldn't help handicapped riders a bit. ADAPT's point about access to transportation is sensible, but its specific objectives and strategies are not.

If ADAPT's wheelchair guerrillas really want to make some progress, they should shelve some of their sanctimony and use a little common sense. No serious person can accept its demands to install lifts on all public buses, but many people will support expanded van services for handicapped citizens. Rather than de ding the impossible, ADAPT should focus on reasonable ways to help handicapped people get from place to place.

[Image]
[Image caption] Detroit Police place an ADAPT protester in a specially equipped police van.

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