Don't Tie Me Down

One of my biggest irritations by local public transportation, if you are a person in a wheelchair is, the Authority’s insistence of strapping wheelchair users down to the floor of the bus. The driver, of course, is the person who has to do this and they are already pissed to even have to be loading a wheelchair user in the first place let alone have to “strap them in”. And I, as a consumer, just hate having the driver having to fiddle and hover all around me. Sometimes they smell. But this rule of the Transit Authority and if I am going to ride their vehicles I have to be belted in or tied down. Sometimes I can talk the driver into not belting me but that is rare. In fact I have always been a bit surprised with the strength of the local transit union.

The reason I bring up this history is the Authority also has what the call CAT committee or (Committee for Accessible Transportation). The CAT is a group which supposedly works to make the transit authority’ service to people with disabilities better. Actually I believe the CAT and committees like CAT are nothing more then “holding tanks” designed to keep the best and most effective folk of the disabled community controlled or silent. Anyway, one of the committee members, whom use a power chair for mobility, recently road the train for the first time and realized that people in wheelchairs d were not tied down. She could not believe and was going to do something about it. It bad enough that TRAX was built on high profile vehicles necessitating people with mobility impairments use mini high blocks for access and on top of that, the only car that people using wheelchairs CAN access, even with the mini-high blocks, is the first car and the driver has to get out of his station and let down the bridge plate and let the wheelchair user board. Belting the consumer too would be too much. Really, on sa bus as train I think a tie-down system is just window dressing. Sort of Like what Seinfeld says in his joke about the helmet and the skydiver. If a person is going to “bounce” 30,0000 feet whether or not the jumper is wearing a helmet is the diver’s major concern. If the train is going to do a major crash being tied down is not going to make a whole hell of a lot of difference.

So, I have a call into the “adviser” to the CAT committee and will try to persuade her to take these suggestions with a grain of salt. I really don’t think doing this will be a problem. Supposedly the train is a completely different animal the bus but I have learned never underestimate the power of a single consumer with an ego to maintain.