131–140 of 142 posts
What about mothers/fathers with baby buggies?
You carry the buggy up the stairs together and if you're on your own a stranger will help you. It's very common to see this (and to help people when you see they need help) in NYC. Beside our reputation, we're a friendly bunch here.
Vienna retro-fitted every subway station with wheelchair and stroller compatible elevators. Don't discount the latter, so much easier for parents to use the subway that way. It totally can be done. The US carved off a slice of every sidewalk to allow for ramps for wheelchairs, nationwide.
It's simpler in Vienna though because they have a proof of payment system. You just need one elevator to the platform. In NY, you need one to the turnstiles, and then another one to the platform.
though i can understand need for them in China where people even refill their bottles in IKEA at self serving driving machines, but one would think that Americans are more honest
I highly suspect it is plain cheaper (and more convenient) to just subsidize private car rides for disabled people than making entire transit infrastructure in huge city to account for them. Better yet, take the money that government would otherwise spend on building all the wheelchair accomodations, and just distribute that between wheelchair users. I am sure many of them would prefer that over subway improvements w…
Plain cheaper, sure. But the government isn't a for-profit corporation. One of the central policy themes of the last few decades is increasing inclusivity, that the mainstreaming of marginalized people isn't solely for their direct benefit but also to increase their visibility in the eyes of the majority and as such build awareness and empathy. Segregationist policy is un-American.
Spending money efficiently and helping disabled people more than modifying every building would, doesn't in any way imply that the government is a for profit corporation.
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ParaTransit does not operate vehicles themselves - ParaTransit is simply a program that purchases these services from private, for-profit operators (like, say, Uber), and manages eligibility checks as well as payment to providers for rides delivered. > "Better service would require paying market rates - by the city, or partly by the city." This is what happens. The riders themselves pay the "regular" transit fare of…
> The small size of the customer base also means drivers spend much more time than usual traveling to a pickup. Wouldn't a service like Uber avoid this issue? The cost for a disabled persons Uber ride won't be significantly above the cost for my Uber ride. While the cost of a dedicated service, per ride, will be significantly higher.
> The problem here is there is simply very little incentive for cab company or driver to service this demographic. Accessible vans are expensive and they reduce "normal" passenger capacity. Accessible customers require more time - both traveling to pickups, as well as getting in/out of the vehicles, which is time the driver is not being paid.
The cost for a disabled person's Uber ride is significantly above the cost of your Uber ride, and so there's no incentive for Uber to service this market at the same price.
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The thing with accessibility elevators is it just not people in wheel chair that benefit from them. Elderly people, people that have sports injury and can't climb stairs, having groceries, or kids and strollers etc, etc... Even in the sidewalks, the lips of the sidewalks that slope towards the street in intersections, it is just not people with wheelchairs that benefit from them, but anybody with carrying a stroller,…
i am not native speaker, but you meant carrying stroller as in pushing or literally carrying it folded?
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I don't want this to come off as harsh but it's a huge city with lots of money that has a pretty large disabled community. They've been really slow upgrading their train stations but their lack of action doesn't make it OK to never fix the problem. Keeping people from riding the subway because they're disabled is a form of discrimination under ADA. IANAL but I think cities like NYC need to have a plan for upgrading a…
could parents with strollers sue them? i guess it would be much bigger group than disabled people
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2015/p0730-us-disability....
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could parents with strollers sue them? i guess it would be much bigger group than disabled people
In 2015 the CDC estimated that 1 in 5 American adults was living with a disability. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2015/p0730-us-disability....
according such statistics it's also half of the women experiencing domestic violence, when you tell your wife you wanna watch different TV show than her, it's some verbal abuse or violence and similar crap with rape statistics in Sweden
I highly suspect it is plain cheaper (and more convenient) to just subsidize private car rides for disabled people than making entire transit infrastructure in huge city to account for them. Better yet, take the money that government would otherwise spend on building all the wheelchair accomodations, and just distribute that between wheelchair users. I am sure many of them would prefer that over subway improvements w…
I live in Boston, and follow the politics and spending of the MBTA pretty closely. Their current paratransit system costs $40-$50 per trip, EACH WAY. It costs them about $100 million/year to operate (http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/Panel/Paratran...)
It's expensive because they need large vans with wheelchair lifts, trained drivers, and service is door to door. They cover the entire service area of the regular public transport system, and coordinating rides is difficult and time-consuming. If this were replaced by a cab system, you'd have to train drivers and still get the expensive large vans. You'd need a way to guarantee service availability and reliability. That sort of thing isn't cheap.
Looking at elevators, even a very expensive 2-3 story elevator is $50k to install, and might be $10k yearly for a service contract (http://www.facilitiesnet.com/elevators/article/Economics-of-...) Certainly, the cost of elevators, escalators, and other accommodations are trivial in the MBTA budget, compared to the cost of paratransit. I've read a lot of budget documents from them, and I've never seen "elevators and escalators" as a line item. I mean, we're talking a $2 billion budget. $100 million is expensive. Even if you cut it in half somehow, it's still expensive. $1 million for elevator maintenance? Not expensive.
Because of the extreme expense of paratransit, it's difficult to sign up for the program. You can't simply arrive in Boston as a tourist in a wheelchair and expect to hop on the paratransit system. You apply, you submit records, you interview, you get issued a special account -- it's a big deal. They cover the entire service area of the existing public transport system and coordination is difficult, so you have to request a ride at least an hour before it arrives.
In addition, "the disabled" are not a group of people who just sit at home until their next doctors appointment or grocery store trip, and are happy to apply for a paratransit pickup the day before. They go out with friends, travel with friends (I've ridden the bus/subway with friends in wheelchairs several times -- it would be super awkward if they had to take a separate car), they might be running late for something, they decide they want to stop at a bar after work, or spontaneously run a few errands during a free moment. While paratransit may be very useful for some people (very sick, the elderly, patients with dementia, etc) it would be downright weird for an otherwise healthy and active person who's simply unable to use stairs.
Above and beyond that, accessibility doesn't just help the disabled. The author referenced this article: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_curb_cut_effect about curb cuts becoming widespread, which ended up being a tremendous help to people who were ablebodied, as well. My relatives come to visit Boston, and both my mother and grandmother have different forms of severe arthritis. For about a year after her hip surgery, my mom had to walk with a cane -- we took the elevators at every subway stop. We did the same when my grandparents were in town. I had a bad ankle sprain a few years ago and also had to use the elevators. You see a lot of people with strollers, luggage, several small children in tow during rush hour -- elevators are a huge benefit.
As a healthy, young, ablebodied person, I would never ever want the accessibility of public transport to go away in favor of "stairs for the normies" and "taxi vouchers/cash for people in wheelchairs." It's frankly a terrible plan that benefits no one.
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Insanity? That's dirt cheap . Think about how much mechanical complexity goes into each door, how it has multiple motors, servos, linear actuators and such. It has to be safe when closed, and it has to be safe when opened, it can't spontaneously shut in someone's face or pin them in the middle. It needs multiple sensors that can handle being exposed to a lot of wear and tear. It needs to operate for years on end with…
Sorry, but $20K per door is still ridiculous. This is not new technology, automatically operated doors are used in many different settings. It's pure gov't waste to pay that much. It would be wasteful if it was 1/4 that much.
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Insanity? That's dirt cheap . Think about how much mechanical complexity goes into each door, how it has multiple motors, servos, linear actuators and such. It has to be safe when closed, and it has to be safe when opened, it can't spontaneously shut in someone's face or pin them in the middle. It needs multiple sensors that can handle being exposed to a lot of wear and tear. It needs to operate for years on end with…
It occurs to one that elevator doors are every bit as complex as what you ecan scribe and have been doing their job for over half a century at a cost of far less than that. But really, you don't even need a door - a simple gate like on a ride at Disneyland, or heck even the gates at the station entrance would do nicely.