The Riverfront Times, ST. LOUIS' LARGEST WEEKLY: 211,962 READERS EVERY WEEK!
MAY 18-24, 1988
[This article continues in ADAPT 398, but the entire text is included here for easier reading]
PHOTO: Three plain clothes policemen try to hold back a man in a motorized wheelchair (Ken Heard). One is behind Ken, one beside him holding the armrest and the third is in front bending forward trying to manipulate the driving mechanism that is on the footrest of Ken's wheelchair. (Ken drove his chair with his foot.) Ken is in shorts and an ADAPT shirt and wears a pony tail and head band, and he is leaning forward concentrating on trying to control his chair. A uniformed policeman looks on from behind or is possibly looking to help. On the right side of the photo, another man in a scooter (Tommy Malone from KY) is watching. Behind him is a set of glass doors and blocking one is a woman in a wheelchair (Barbara Guthrie of Colorado Springs). She is wearing dark glasses and a brimmed hat as well as her ADAPT shirt.

title: Picket To Ride,
Why the disabled take to the streets to get down the road
by Joseph Schuster

For most who want to take the bus, the biggest problem is finding exact change to drop into the fare box. But for disabled persons dependent on wheelchairs, the fare box is more a slot machine: Their chance of getting on a bus is frequently as unlikely as hitting the jackpot. The problem is an acute shortage of buses equipped with wheelchair lifts to get disabled passengers into the bus. In St. Louis, less than one-fourth of the 690 buses operated by Bi-State Development Agency are equipped with lifts; only half of those available lifts function. The story is the same in almost every city across the United States, and now disabled rights activists are pointing to the lack of accessible transportation as the most significant problem facing the disabled today. "In the past (disabled groups) placed education and employment programs high as a priority," says Mike Auberger, a leader and founder of American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT). "But we've always seen that as the biggest joke: 'Hire the handicapped.' You can give me a job, one that pays a good salary, but if I can't drive (because of a disability) and can't take a bus, there's no way in heaven you can hire me. It's been, 'Here, let's put this piece of the pie out here for you but not give you a way to reach it.

The unemployment rate among disabled Americans is appallingly high. The most recent figures available for St. Louis are from the 1980 census, says Russ Signorino spokesman for the Missouri Division of Employment Security.

[at this point in the article the first column is cut off on the left, slightly]

According to that census, there were 119.000 [disa]bled St. Louisans. but only 48,000 were in [the] work force. says Signorino. Of the 71,000 of the labor force. 59.000 did not work [bec]ause their disability prevented them from [emp]loyment. The balance of 12,000 disabled [unclear]ons were so-called "discouraged workers." [Indi]viduals who had stopped looking for work [beca]use of various factors.

‘You're going to find a higher percentage of [disc]ouraged workers among the disabled (than [amo]ng the general population)." Signorino [said].

Nationally, less than one-third of the country's 13 million disabled are in the labor force, according to the Statistical Abstract of the United States 1986, the most recent edition to {unclear] information on the employment status of disabled Americans.

Of those who are in the work force, almost {unclear]-fifth are unemployed. ("Discouraged" workers are not included in the work force; those who are unemployed. but looking for work. are.) This is compared, in the same year, with the able-bodied population of the country, which nearly 70 percent of 133 million persons were in the workforce and 9.6 percent of those were unemployed.

The problem of lack of access to public transit brought Auberger and more than 100 other members of ADAPT to St. Louis this week to demonstrate at the annual meeting of Eastern region of the American Public Transit Authority [sic] (APTA), the industry's [principal] trade organization.

ADAPT wants the transit industry to move toward what ADAPT calls "100 percent accessibility." That is every bus in the country would have wheelchair lifts. But APTA opposes that saying it is impractical and too expensive. It favors, instead, what is known as "local option." Each transit authority would decide how it would make public transportation accessible for the disabled, using either buses equipped with lifts, paratransit vans with lifts (the so-called dial-a-ride services, or a combination of the two.

Right now, 18 percent of the nation's systems use lift-equipped buses exclusively, 44 percent use paratransit vans and the remainder — including St. Louis — use a combination.

Nationally, according to APTA Deputy Executive Director Albert Engelken, one in three buses is lift-equipped. That is progress,
Engelken says. In 1980, only about 11 percent of the nation's buses were lift-equipped.

But for ADAPT and others in the disabled community, the progress is too slow. “I'm damned impatient," says Jim Tuscher, vice-president of programs for Paraquad, a St. Louis non-profit agency that serves disabled people. "I personally have been involved with Bi-State for well over 10 years, negotiating, trying to get an accessible transit system and today we still do not have an adequate system. Sure, their attitude is better now than it was 10 years ago, in that they are willing to cooperate with the disabled community. They had to be dragged, kicking and screaming into this. But I‘m a results person and so far I haven't seen any. I still can't go out to the corner and take a bus."

Currently, 171 (24.8 percent) of Bi-State's 690 buses are equipped with wheelchair lifts. Tom Sturgess, the company's director of communication, says the system has a goal of 100 percent wheelchair accessibility, but getting there is a slow process. Later this summer, the number of lift-equipped buses will be increased to 238, but that will still mean that only one in three Bi-State buses can be used by a disabled person. Sturgess says Bi-State has notified its manufacturer that it will be buying another 60 lift-equipped buses sometime in the near future.

Of the company's present 171 wheelchair lifts, only 85 (or just less than half) function. “We've had a lot of problems with them." says Sturgess. “The new buses we're getting will have a different kind of lift in them, one we think will work. Of those we have, we're in the process of repairing as many as we can, but some will never operate again. We're convinced it wouldn't be economically feasible to do so. The biggest problem is the salt they spread on the streets and highways. It sprays up into the lift mechanism, corrodes the wires and rusts the lifts.“

Because there are so few lift-equipped buses at present, only 16 to 18 of Bi-State's 129 routes have accessible buses, says Todd Plesko, Bi-State's director of service planning and scheduling. But not every bus that travels those routes has a lift. For example, on Bi lift-equipped buses on that same route is roughly an hour.

But a disabled person's chances of actually being able to get onto a lift-equipped buson that route is less than one-in-four. because of the large number of lifts that don‘t work. Plesko says, until recently, Bi-State marked its schedules with stars beside the times a lift-equipped bus would come along to any particular stop. But the transit service no longer does that. he says.

“(A disabled person) would go out to the stop expecting a lift-equipped bus to come along," he says. "But when it would come, the lift wouldn't work, and so they would have to wait another hour or longer for another (lift-equipped) bus."

Now, if a disabled person wants to take the bus, they are advised to call Bi-State, which will check with its maintenance department to determine when a bus with a functioning lift will come along.

The problem is made worse because, at present, not every Bi-State driver knows how to operate the lifts, says Plesko. “All the drivers are trained (in the use of the lifts), but we have 1,000 drivers who change routes about once every 90 days." Drivers may take their training and go for months never having to use a lift because they are not assigned to a route that uses lift-equipped buses, Plesko says “The drivers might get nervous because they're not sure the lift will work or that they will be able to operate it, so they might tell (the disabled person) that the bus is not lift-equipped and that another will be along later," he says.

To supplement its buses that run a regular route and schedule, Bi-State also has a Call-A-Ride service, which gives curb-to-curb transportation for anyone who requests it. About half the system's 21 Call-a-Ride vans all lift-equipped, Plesko says.

But while the service is billed as being part of Bi-State's effort for disabled passengers, the fact is less than 8 percent of the riders on the service are in wheelchairs. A recent Bi-State news release describing the systems services for the disabled says the Call-a-Ride service "provides curb-to-curb... transportation ...for the elderly. disabled as well as others." Call-a-Ride can be used by anyone, disabled or able-bodied. Last year, of the 74,000 trips Dial-a-Ride vans made, only 5.500 were by wheelchair passengers.

The vans operate only Monday through Friday. 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and, because of the hours of the service, most disabled individuals cannot use it as transportation to and from their jobs. It was never intended as transportation to get people to and from work, Plesko says, but a service to take people on short runs such as to the store near their home.

end of story

PHOTO BY MIKE DEFILIPPO: Three people in wheelchairs are sitting in an arranged circle. All have stern expressions on their faces. Bob Kafka in his manual wheelchair, curly hair and salt and pepper beard, dressed in light colors, sits facing forward. Round dark glasses hang from a cord around his neck. Stephanie Thomas, in a manual wheelchair, with shoulder length curly hair, sits sideways looking over her shoulder at the camera. Behind these two sits Mike Auberger facing the opposite direction from Stephanie but also looking at the camera. He has a neatly trimmed beard and mustache, an ADAPT T-shirt and semi-dark glasses. His hair is pulled tightly back in a single braid.
Caption reads: ...[cut off]... in right: Bob Kafka, Mike Auberger and Stephanie Thomas of ADAPT

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Thursday 11 July 2013

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Wednesday 20 December 2017

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ADAPT - American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, APTA - American Public Transit Association, Barb Guthrie, Bi-State Development Agency, Bob Kafka, demographics, dial-a-ride, driver training, employment, headway between buses, Jim Tuscher, Ken Heard, local option, maintain lifts, Mike Auberger, Paraquad CIL, percent accessible, police, regional convention, riding buses, Statistical Abstract of the United States, Stephanie Thomas, Tommy Malone, US Census, wheelchair lifts

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