It's time for an edition of the (In)Accessibility Spotlight, brought to you by my local public transit company, not naming any names.
This particular company has an accessibility policy based on a "Cooperative Seating" system on regular buses and a paratransit option for people who need door to door service. I don't currently qualify for paratransit, because apparently bus operators refusing to follow policy doesn't fit their criteria. I may qualify in the winter though.
The Cooperative Seating system looks like priority seating on the surface, but it's a touch more... complicated in practice. Here's the blurb from their website on the topic:
What is Cooperative Seating?
Cooperative or priority seating areas are available near the front of our buses and the REDACTED entrances. These seats are intended for customers who may have difficulty standing in a moving vehicle, including:
- Persons with disabilities
- Senior citizens
- Persons with assistive devices, such as wheelchairs, scooters, walkers and canes
- Pregnant women
- Customers with open strollers
The problem comes in when there's competition for the seats. The official policy is first-come-first-served for people who need the seats. That's rarely how it works out in practice.
Take today's incident as an example:
I got on the bus this afternoon. I live near the beginning of the route, so getting a seat when I got on the bus wasn't difficult and the driver even waited until I was seated to drive. The bus before had been late enough that the bus I was on actually ended up ahead of it in a few spots and both buses were getting pretty crowded. I was about 3/4 of the way to my destination when 3 families with strollers got on the bus. The people sitting across from me got up to make room for 2 of the strollers, but I'm unable to stand on the bus, and I need to sit facing the aisle because I have trouble bracing my feet (it's excruciatingly painful, especially with a lot of sharp starts and stops). I explained this to both the driver and the woman with the stroller. The driver insisted that I had to get up, and that the policy isn't first-come-first-served.
Then the dad of the kid in the stroller starts in on me, telling me (talking to me like a disobedient child no less) that these seats were priority seating and that I had to get up for strollers. I once again explained that I need the seat, that I have a priority seating card, and that I walk with canes. The driver again insisted that I get up, and told me that I was making the bus late. So I got off. The driver of the bus right behind the one I was riding refused to stop for me, so I had to wait 10 minutes for the next one.
This isn't the first time this scenario has played out for me. This isn't even the first time this week. I'm regularly harassed by parents with strollers. One guy even tried to fold me up in the seat, I guess thinking that I didn't understand what he was asking.
I reported the incident, but nothing will happen with that, and I'm getting awfully tired of dealing with this kind of crap.
Thus and so, my local transit company came to be featured in today's (In)Accessibility Spotlight.
