The program, which started in 1990 following litigation against the city by people with disabilities and the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week and charges riders $2.75, the same as the cost of a subway ride. “The potential actions that would need to be taken in the absence of $12 billion in emergency federal funding - including the reduction of subway, bus and commuter rail service, as well as a delay of the MTA’s historic capital plan - would affect anyone who uses the MTA system,” said Shams Tarek, a spokesperson for the agency.Īctivists like Lerebours have been fighting for changes to Access-a-Ride for years. The MTA has said that no particular aspect of the transit system is being specially targeted, and that all aspects of the agency are threatened by the lack of federal emergency funding. “I understand they’re going through financial trouble, but the disabled community always seem to be the first to pay the price.” “When it comes to the disabled community, they always take the back seat,” said Tashia Lerebours, the Access-A-Ride coordinator for the Center For Independence of the Disabled, New York. Transit accessibility advocates say that these cuts, although necessary due to the pandemic, unfairly target riders with disabilities. And Access-A-Ride, the city’s network of shared-ride vans and taxis for disabled riders who can’t use the subway or buses, may soon face the prospect of diminished and less efficient service. The 2020-2024 capital plan, which would make dozens more subway stations around the city wheelchair-accessible, is on hold while the MTA hopes for $12 billion in federal funds to address a budget shortfall. Now, this program is one of several on the chopping block with the transit agency’s finances in tumult since ridership dropped steeply at the beginning of the pandemic. “On-demand has seriously improved my life so that I wasn’t continuously late for meetings,” Rimawi said. She experienced long waits for the vans to arrive and was often late as the vans stopped to pick up other passengers along the way.īut in 2017, Rimawi, who works as a campaign coordinator for the nonprofit New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, was invited to join a pilot program for a new “on-demand” service through Access-A-Ride, where she could call a ride when she needed it rather than days earlier. When Eman Rimawi needed to get to a meeting or run an errand, she used to have to schedule a ride to pick her up a day or two in advance - a blue-and-white van provided through the MTA’s Access-A-Ride program for people with disabilities.
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