Wheelchair Bumping

More and more people with disabilities, who use wheelchairs for mobility, in this area are beginning to use the light rail system for a transportation in this area. This is good and bad. Good in the sense that everyone should use public transportation. Public transportation works or many people in the Salt Lake area, it’s inexpensive, dependable and many times convenient and best of all public transportation in this area Utah Transit Authority(UTA) is accessible to people with disabilities. Now the big drawback to all this wonderful transportation is that more and more people in wheelchairs are finding their ways to a Trax station. People who have been so mistreated by UTA’s Para Transit system they are willing to risk everything and try the regular transit system. This is very good! I won’t go into why this is good because I never know who reads this blog, and I could say something which might get me in to big trouble. So suffice it to say that it’s great when someone finally takes the push and gets out of para-transit hell and decides to Ride the real system The problem is the main line system, in my estimation and Trax in particular is seriously under build to serve the number of folks who whish to ride the system. I have touched on this issue in other blog entries. Anyway, yesterday was a typical day on Trax. I get on and there are three other power chairs on the train. We dance our ways into a seating arrangement that allows all of us to ride. The next stop the “dragon lady” boards. Dragon Lady is a women who has some sort of hidden disability and has managed to get her “disability pass” she walks dragging (dragon) a wheeled basket. She is kind of spooky and she is very demanding(until you get to know her), assertive (Dragon) in asking for a forwarding facing seat. There are actually a number of the able bodied riders who are quite frightened of her. There are all blog entries for another time. So Dragon Lady comes on board and then at the next stop another power chair squeezes on. The next stop ANOTHER chairs its. The driver opens the door and lowers the bridge-plate but there is no way this guy is riding this train. The guy finally backs back on to the platform and waves the train forward indicating he will wait for the next train twenty minutes later. The driver “buttons” the train up and zips away. I cannot believe the crip let that happen! I wouldn’t, I would have turned my chair on high and plowed in. UTA should not be able to get away with this—they should have to be responsible to people they “bump” just like the airlines. I was thinking UTA should provide at least month pass to someone they “bump”. Providing some sort of compensation would kill the Authority and perhaps urge the Authority forward to remedy this unfair system. Three bumps in a month and the poor consumer should get free transit for a year.