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The Disability Grapevine Online Newspaper: Issue #37
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Year 5
http://www.disabilitygrapevine.com
****The Number One Daily Newspaper for People with Disabilities****
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Title of Article:
A Little Movement Toward More Taxis for Wheelchairs
Submitted By: Catherine Alfieri
7 Summer Tree
Pittsford, NY 14534
585-586-1682
Founder:
Monroe County Women's Disability Network
[log in to unmask]
http://www.mcwdn.org
VirtEd
http://www.mcwdn.org/VirtEd2.html
RochEd Online
http://www.mcwdn.org/Roch/RochEd.html
"See with your heart, Speak with your heart!"
Written By:
Michael Luo
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/25/nyregion/25taxi.html?ex=1094420553&ei=1&en=61684fa6d90fffef
Article:
Four years ago, taxi officials raised the possibility of
making all the city's yellow cabs accessible to
wheelchairs. But the idea never went anywhere, apparently
fading into the ranks of other well-intentioned public
accommodations that never seem to become reality in New
York, like public toilets and direct train service to the
airport.
Today, only three of the city's 12,487 yellow cabs are
accessible, meaning that someone in a wheelchair has about
one chance in 4,162 of hailing an accessible minivan.
In contrast, other major American cities, including
Chicago, Boston and San Francisco, have significantly
expanded the availability of the vehicles in recent years.
In London, every cab has been wheelchair-accessible since
1989.
"New York is grossly behind," said Diane McGrath-McKechnie,
a former chairwoman of the city's Taxi and Limousine
Commission who has become a proponent of making cabs
wheelchair-accessible since leaving office several years
ago. "These other cities have been out there far in advance
of New York. I think it's outrageous."
There is movement now, however hesitant, on a matter that
to some New Yorkers is as basic as being able to get across
town without a major ordeal.
"The issue with yellow cabs is spontaneity," said Edith
Prentiss, an advocate for the disabled and a Manhattan
resident who uses a motorized wheelchair. "I don't need to
make a plan like I'm invading Europe, which is really what
it often feels like."
The Taxi and Limousine Commission is expected to vote today
to modify the rules of its next medallion auction to try to
encourage the purchase of medallions specifically
designated for wheelchair-accessible cabs, something it
tried but failed to do in the last auction.
Although only 27 medallions would be so designated, the
commission's chairman, Matthew W. Daus, said the move would
be progress.
"This is something we're tremendously committed to," he
said last week.
The taxi commission is also finally enforcing a
three-year-old rule requiring that all black car and livery
cab companies, more than 700 in all, either buy their own
wheelchair-accessible van or contract with another company
to provide it on demand.
In what would be a much more radical shift, a bill that
would require the eventual conversion of the entire yellow
cab fleet is being considered by Councilman John C. Liu,
chairman of the City Council's Transportation Committee.
The bill is being vigorously opposed, just as the
commission's proposal was four years ago, by fleet owners
and others in the industry with high-powered lobbyists.
Over the last year, Mr. Liu has met repeatedly with them
and with advocates for the disabled who have banded
together under a group named Taxis for All.
"There's no doubt that yellow cabs will be accessible for
people in wheelchairs in the future," Mr. Liu said. "The
question is whether it will be 20 years from now, 10 years
from now, or 3 years from now."
Taxi industry representatives argue that a blanket
requirement would be disastrous.
"Being demanding and destroying an industry to help a group
of people at this time isn't the proper thing to do,
either," said David Pollack, president of the Committee for
Taxi Safety, a group that represents leasing managers. The
organization hired a former speaker of the State Assembly,
Mel Miller, now with the firm Bolton-St. Johns, to lobby
against the bill.
Ms. McGrath-McKechnie, however, described the industry's
objections as mostly "bogus."
"This is an industry of world-class whiners," she said.
"The bottom line is they do not want to spend an extra
penny."
Ms. McGrath-McKechnie said she regretted not pushing ahead
with the wheelchair requirement back in 2000. Instead, the
board passed the livery bill, which was to go in effect in
October 2001, but officials issued a moratorium after the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
When the city finally began enforcing the rule earlier this
year, fewer than a third of 613 companies inspected were
found to be in compliance. The proportion rose to about 80
percent after the commission began issuing warnings and
then summonses, but most of the companies are signed up
with a single organization, A Ride for All, which has only
four vans to serve the entire city.
Census data and estimates by advocates for the disabled put
the number of people who use wheelchairs in New York City
at 60,000. Because of the lack of elevators at many subway
stations and the gap between trains and platforms, many of
them depend on city buses, which transport wheelchair-bound
passengers about 64,000 times a month. The buses are often
slow, especially if multiple transfers are required.
Another option is New York City Transit's Access-a-Ride
program, a shared van service that handles 10,500 riders a
week but has been dogged by complaints of unreliability and
inconvenience.
In October 2003, city officials helped start A Ride for
All, a livery company that specializes in wheelchair
passengers. Although many disabled New Yorkers praised the
concept, the company and its limited resources were quickly
overwhelmed. Reservations often need to be made up to a
week in advance, several people interviewed said.
Industry representatives cite three main obstacles to
making cabs wheelchair-accessible: the cost of conversion,
the durability of the cabs and high insurance premiums.
Although advocates for the disabled have contested them on
each point, this much is not in dispute: the workhorse of
the yellow taxicab fleet right now is the Ford Crown
Victoria, which costs about $23,500. Initially, industry
representatives put the price of an accessible minivan at
$33,000 to $39,000, but after soliciting bids from several
companies, they conceded that the vehicles could be bought
for as little as $27,500.
Even this difference of a few thousand dollars per cab,
however, would cost fleet owners "hundreds of millions of
dollars," said Michael Woloz, a spokesman for the
Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, an organization of
fleet owners.
Making matters worse, minivans do not last as long as Crown
Victorias, Mr. Woloz said. Fleet garages, which operate 24
hours a day and account for about 30 percent of the taxi
industry, use Crown Victorias almost exclusively, because
owners learned long ago that minivans do not hold up, he
said.
Timothy Jans, chief executive officer of Cook Dupage
Transportation, a paratransit operator in Chicago that has
about 110 accessible minivans in its fleet, said in a
telephone interview that he generally kept his vans on the
road for four years, and that they average about 220,000
miles before being retired but occasionally get up to
250,000 miles. That is comparable to the mileage of typical
fleet vehicles before they are retired, according to a 2003
industry report.
But Anthony Bottalla, the owner of a taxicab fleet in
Chicago who was among the first to put
wheelchair-accessible cabs on the road there several years
ago, said minivans were much more costly to maintain.
Several years ago, officials in Chicago began requiring
fleets to buy one wheelchair-accessible vehicle for every
15 vehicles they own.
After 125,000 miles, he said, his minivans have invariably
needed major repairs, much earlier than Crown Victorias,
which can sometimes go twice that long.
Advocates for the disabled argue that the difference could
be made up with incentives from the taxi commission, like
extending the mandatory retirement age of minivans a
year-and-a-half.
"Durability is not an excuse for exclusion," said Joe
Rappaport, the former head of the Straphangers Campaign,
who was recently hired by the United Spinal Association to
help lead the taxi campaign.
The insurance issue is fiercely contested as well. Edward
McGettigan Sr., president of American Transit, the yellow
cab industry's major carrier, declared in an interview that
his company would not insure whee
lchair-accessible yellow
cabs. He cited the extra training that he said would be
required of taxi drivers, the danger of trying to load such
passengers in traffic, and the possibility of fraud. If
someone were to write a policy for a wheelchair-accessible
cab, he estimated that it would cost twice what one for a
standard cab costs.
But advocates for the disabled say the State Department of
Insurance polled several insurance companies and concluded
that wheelchair accessibility should not affect cost.
So what to make of the claims and counterclaims? Mr. Liu
said that he was still studying the issue, but that he
thought it would have to be all or nothing.
"The whole point of a yellow cab is you go on a street and
you can hail one," he said. "If only 3 percent or a
ludicrous percent of yellow cabs are accessible, well, what
are you doing?"
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that of The Disability Grapevine.
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