My frail 85 year old mother has been using AAR for many years. They have put her through so much aggravation. It's sad that not a lot of progress has been made to make this program efficient. I mean down to the smallest details. For example, it's ridiculous that riders STILL require exact change for fares. Why isn't there a Metrocard system yet where customers are able to prepay for rides in advance? My mother is homebound. She can't be going out all the time to get change. So I bring it to her. But in this day and age there should be a better system in place.
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Wife uses a motorized chair and needs the AAR vans with a lift to get her to her Doctor's appointments. Seems as if my wife gets on the AAR bus they will take her all around the city before hitting Starrett City. AAR have a bunch of garages in this area and save my wife's trip to be the last drop off.
My wife besides using the motorized chair is a diabetic and has crashed a few times while taking tours of Manhattan and Queens. My wife packs her bad with sugar packets and also carries a soda in her chair too. Also from the bouncing around on those buses she get nauseous and also carries a trash bag if she needs to vomit while sightseeing the outer areas of Queens.
These drives seem to love the Jackie Robinson Parkway and what a mistake...you have to ride the entire length of Pennsylvania Avenue. You can take the Belt Parkway and home in half the time and less stop and go, adding to the wifes discomfort. When I ride I always ask the driver how he plans to get to where we are going or returning to Starrett City, Brooklyn.
I had divers who have no idea where they are and I show them a route how to get to Starrett. They should have drivers that have a vague idea where they are and how to travels in NYC.
Must say I never had any rude drivers the times I travel with the wife. They seem as if they are willing to listen and at times takes my advice. I worked for the NYCTA and drove around the city for 13 years and have and idea where I am and where I am going.
This is my problem..
I'd like to mention another facet of the decrepit State-run M.T.A. step-child Access-a-Ride programme. A couple of years ago I had surgery which during the recuperation period it was very difficult for me to use the Transit Authority buses and subway, so that I applied for Access-a-Ride. I qualified, but it took "them" six months to grant it; however, by then, I no longer needed the programme. Something must be done to speed up the application process in general and especially for those who may require Access-a-Ride immediately for a limited time.
Furthermore the M.T.A. does not listen to the plaints of the population it serves--a paternalistic "father knows best" attitude. Add to that the incompetent managers and the drivers who don't know the City.
Perchance, a lawsuit in U.S. District Court under the three major Federal disability acts seeking the appointment of a special master to oversee and to reform Access-a-Ride, and paid for from the M.T.A.'s bloated budget. Full stop.
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Mayor DeBlasio is too busy now running for President to worry about the subways and disabled New Yorkers.
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Our Mayor DeBlasio should ride subways with broken elevators, escalators and use Access-a-ride. According to him, these services are not under his purview. How about championing fixing these blatant disregards for our citizens instead of using city limos and running for President. What a disgrace!
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I use a wheelchair. I use Cobb County Paratransit. Most trips back home are timely. The problem is that once you start that journey it's a crap-shoot. You may be on the bus with three other passengers going you know not where. Two hours taking a tour of evening commutes in the second worst traffic in the country.
To add to the fun, your point of departure may not have a US Access Board acceptable bathroom. This leads to an exercise in urological manipulation. "Will I win this contest between my bladder and my time on the bus?"
Another day in the life.
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If NYC likes to be considered a progressive city why in regards to those who are not able bodied do they fail over and over? The ADA was implemented decades ago and yet NYC doesn't seem to care. Where is diversity and inclusion in this so called city of progressives. This city and the MTA in particular is nothing but regressive when it comes to people who are not ambulatory. At some point in all of our lives we will reach a point where we will not be able to easily get around. Where is the humanity?
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My sister is severely mentally disabled. She's ambulatory, but can't talk. Try to imagine standing on the sidewalk for 30 minutes with a fully-grown adult woman who doesn't understand why. Imagine the building frustration, the tantrums, the questions and suspicion from people walking by. Imagine her getting so impatient she tries to dart into traffic because she can't wait any longer.
Imagine all that in the rain.
Advanced reservation e-hail was a godsend. We're willing to make all our plans 48 hours in advance, if it means that the car arrives roughly when it's supposed to. It is MADDENING that the MTA took this service away. We've gone back to the days of heartache for my sister, and my mother losing the little free time she has because she has to tack on an extra hour on either end of every trip.
It seems like the real problems stemmed from on-demand e-hail. That program was a luxury. But responsive, reasonably timely (i.e. the same expectations of timeliness as the subway) transportation is NOT a luxury. It's a necessity.
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Access-A-Ride is "separate but equal" transportation, because it is both separate from and equally as unreliable as the city's larger public transportation system.
Anyone who uses NYC's public buses knows that they are the real paratransit system; surface transport vehicles with ramps, which means they are more accessible than the subway and therefore, accessible to everyone. Improving surface transportation, seems to be a low priority overall, but particularly for the city DoT, which manages the streets, and prefers to tout pedestrian malls and bike lanes.
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Why is are services so bad? This city is filled with rich people-and we are told rich people are good for the city because they pay taxes. This city should have lots of money from all those rich people. But services stink.
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So very crazy a system. A friend of mine used access a ride to go to Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn. She is elderly and worked at the college until she was over 90. She lived about 2 miles from the campus but needed the transport as she could not ride the city buses. Hardly ever on time, these rides also make many of our disabled students late for classes.
One time, the driver decided to deliver my friend to the college by way of Queens. When she objected and asked to be left off first, he refused and was continuing on to Queens when she insisted that he leave her off on Emmons Ave where she was able to hail a taxi. This has to be one of the worst services ever!
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If any business concern denied access to the handicapped they would face massive fines, and would possibly be closed( this happened in my community). The City of New York apparently has an exemption I’m not aware of. There should not be one facet of the NYC Transit System without access for those physically challenged. Where are the fines and penalties that should be imposed upon the city for continually breaking federal law?
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Thank you for finally bringing attention to the maddening program that is Access-A-Ride, or A-Stress-A-Ride, as many of us call it. When i was first approved for the AAR Services i was beyond thrilled. I have numerous medical issues that make traveling by bus & subway a very humiliating and painful experience...so of course the thought of a service that could get me around safely seemed like a dream come true. The dream only lasted as long as the E-hail program lasted. When using E-hail, i was getting to and from work and medical appointments on time and i was also able to pick up my 5 yo special needs child on time from his after school program. Now that the "Enhanced Broker Services" have replaced E-hail my dream turned into a nightmare very quickly. Wait times to make appointments/pick-ups are extremely long. I am frequently late for work and for picking up my child...this has caused me to be written up at work, pay additional money to my son's after school program, i'm at risk of losing my son's after school program for how often i am late in picking him up, and even my husband's job is at risk since he has had to come to my rescue so many times. The Broker drivers are also not well trained in dealing with medically fragile individuals. Again, it's just been a nightmare and i feel like all of my complaints get very generic, useless responses. Why can't they figure out a better system or just bring e-hail back. My job, my child, and my sanity are depending on it!
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They don't call it "Stress-a-Ride" for nothing.
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I'm very surprised and disappointed that this article did not mention Accessible Dispatch, which gives residents and visitors with disabilities greater access to green and yellow wheelchair accessible taxis. The program offers a service area that accommodates pick-ups and drop-offs in all five boroughs. Accessible Dispatch is in partnership with The New York Taxi & Limousine Commission. The fares are the same as metered taxis and can be booked on-demand or booked 24 advance by phone or app. Granted it is more expensive than Access-A-Ride, but offers people with disabilities a far superior and dependable experience for those in a position to pay for it. Also important to note that there is no application or medical assessment required to use Accessible Dispatch.
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@Gary Pratt When you consider that 70% of the disability community live at the poverty level, having the highest unemployment level of any socioeconomic group, Accessible Dispatch remains out of the financial reach of most people with disabilities. Finding a way to subsidize these rides for those who cannot afford them should be a priority of NYC’s Transportation Authority if they care to be in compliance of the ADA.
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I have had three close relatives who have had to rely on Access a Ride, and the second-hand stress of their experiences over the last 10 years has been incredible. Advance EHail was amazing, so of course it was eliminated. Who is funding these absurd attempts at “reliable transportation”? Elected officials should try out this system for a week and experience the shame first-hand. It would be a better use of three hours (to go one hour away) than jockeying for higher office.
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@Nina Bannett The disability community needs to raise this issue with those who represent them in government by an active advocacy that focuses their attention on the barriers people with disabilities face to equitable transportation...challenging these elected officials to experience those barriers first-hand.
Not just disabled people.
What about mothers with young children in strollers.
How our society marginalizes their future generation is shameful.
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@Sara Klamer The story isn't about mothers and children, it's about the disabled who need another service.
My mother took me and my sister on the subway and bus all the time. She never had a problem. I don't understand what has changed in 45 years other than laziness and too many feeling they're entitled to something.
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Why hasn't some enterprising ambulance chaser started a class action to compel the city to provide what the disabled are entitled to by the ADA--the right to get around town in a timely manner?
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@Jay Why The disability community should be organizing to reach out to the Civi Rights Division of the DOJ to initiate a class action suit against NYC Metro based on their non-compliance with the paratransit portion of the ADA.
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it is an out rage that they have discontinued advance reservation e-hail.
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"98% on time…" Not in a million years! Also, why do they use a different standard to determine what is considered on time? If the paratransit program used the same standard as the rest of the MTA, they might get 10%.
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@T.K. Small Because paratransit is a shared on-demand ride, it becomes almost impossible to get people with disabilities, from departure to destination, where they need to go on time. There has always been within the ADA paratransit regs a window of 15 minutes on either side of the pickup times, so applying that to each rider widens the length of time they may need to wait. Adding more vehicles to paratransit fleets would be a logical answer, but most paratransit providers are already running in the red because that service is already way more expensive to operate than fixed route service. And the fed does not fund paratransit at the level needed to provide the type of transportation the disability community needs and deserves to be equally included in all community activities per the ADA mandate.
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It is a shame that NYC cannot see its way clear to decent para transit. We have an aging population, plus disabled people are being pushed out of supervised housing into the wild, with no adequate provisions. Steps are being taken to keep people in their homes longer as they age - basically because there is a dearth of adequate supervised housing and nursing home spaces for them.
Let's take more non-essential cars off the streets. Make Access-A-Ride a priority. Have High Occupancy Vehicle Lanes on all major street.
And don't neglect public transportation for the general population. I have navigated public transportation, both as an able-bodied person, and in a wheelchair. It was difficult with both legs operating. In a wheelchair, it was a nightmare.
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@D F Same here. Was in a wheelchair for over six months. It was a nightmare using the MTA. Even though I could not walk or even stand, I was told I did not qualify for Access-A-Ride, so had to rely on buses and subway. Being passed by, even in inclement weather, verbally abused by (a significant minority of) drivers and passengers, for slowing them down, buses with non-functional ramps, and subway cars and platforms that do not align so that one cannot board or disboard without risk of tipping over (which happened to me). Fortunately, now I am ambulatory again, but it was quite an education. Now when I see a disabled or elderly person trying to navigate public transit, I rush to help them, as so many did for me when I was incapacitated. It is inexcusable and if any other class of citizen were treated with such antipathy or disservice it would be called a hate crime.
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@James Using your experience as a disabled transit user, you might want to consider joining your voice to a transportation advocacy group...or initiate one...
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In the "New" New York, only the oligarchs count.
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Having a been a driver in paratransit I know very well how awful the service is for disabled people who rely on it. However, driving for it is even worse. I drove in the STAR division of CDTA in New York’s capital district and I routinely worked 10-12 hour days with only 15-30 minutes off all day. Transit agencies are not required to give you anymore of a break. My schedule also varied daily and dramatically, requiring that I call in the night before to learn what time to come in the next day, and when I left could change up to the last minute of my shift with no notice.
Which is all to say: consider the drivers.
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@Evan-are the drivers unionized? This situation sounds abusive.
This is the most useless and expensive transportation alternative that Rube Goldberg could ever have imagined. It is particularly difficult for disabled employees to get to work or be picked up, and the article could have mentioned what it is like to wait half an hour in the snow or rain with no shelter. It would be far better to simply give eligible people who cannot use mass transit a special metrocard that could be used to pay for yellow or green cabs.
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The users who need electric wheelchairs for mobility would still need dedicated vans.
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@J Fuller
Unless the person is using an oversized motorized wheelchair, the green and yellow taxis work just fine.
NYC taxis are now mostly accessible for powerchairs!
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Several years ago, I took a friend with a stroke and "living" in a nursing home, out for lunch and to doctor's appointments via Access a Ride. He had to be signed out by someone else.
Every complaint in the article was true then and I understand the situation has gotten worse.
It's dreadful.
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