The Roving Activist’s Blog

Yesterday, Metro celebrated an achievement of 100% accessibilty on all of its buses. No longer will passengers who use wheelchairs have to experience the utter frustration of being left at the bus stop because they couldn’t get on an inaccessible bus!

Metro’s next step will be to move away from the hydraulic lift buses, which commonly have mechanical problems, to an entire fleet of low ramp buses. These have the advantage of being able to be operated manually in case the automatic mechanism fails. The driver merely has to lift the ramp, and let it down. The process takes seconds, and the ramp, itself, it quite light.

The event was attended by most of the WMATA bigwigs and managers. A new low ramp bus was there so that people could check it out. I was able to speak at length with Metro’s interim General Manager, Dan Tangherlini, and WMATA Board President, Gladys Mack. My friends, Jack Requa, head of Bus Operations, and Glenn Millis, with the Office of ADA Programs were there, and I spoke with them as well. Glenn reminded me that he had not forgotten our meeting.

Unfortunately, I must admit that I was disappointed with the turnout, and the way that this was put on. Perhaps, I am spoiled by being from Denver, where an event like this would have been a huge deal. Had this been in Denver, the event would have lasted several hours, and practically every employee from RTA would have been there. The mayor, or his representative, as well as several politicians would have been there, and there would have been food up the yin-yang! There would have been dozens of speakers, mostly from the disability community, but the RTA bigwigs, and local politicians would have had their say as well. The media would have been out in force, and attendance by the disability community would have been in the hundreds, at least, because we would have known about this several weeks in advance. Last, but not least, the event would have been held downtown, in a very public place. The entire city would have known that this celebration was taking place!

Although I appreciate the efforts, the DC event was dismal, at best. The largest number of attendees were from Metro. The event started at a bit past 9:00 am, a tad early, in my opinion, and took place at The Ft. Totten rail station, an out-of-the-way train station, and bus transfer point. The entire celebration lasted less than 20 minutes, no one from the general public was there, and because of the DC media’s policy of “if it don’t bleed, it don’t lead”, no one from the media was there. Someone was taking pictures, but I’m sure that he was an employee of Metro. Interestingly enough, there was a two-sentence blurb on NPR later in the afternoon. I guess we should be grateful, eh?

The most disappointing thing for me, however, was the turnout of the disability community. There were exactly three of us. There was a woman from Metro, whose name I cannot remember, my colleague on the E&D Committe, Doris Matchett, and yours truely. Doris was the only speaker representing the disability community. I find it hard to believe that the leaders in the disability commuinty throughout the region would have dissed Metro like this, so I can only surmise that the reason for the nonexistent turnout was due to the poor outreach on the part of Metro. Yes, there were e-invites, but not every person with a disability has access to the Internet. Invitations and flyers should have been sent out to every independent living center, and every organization that had anything to do with disability.

It also would have been good to have invited a couple of politicians, especially, the two city council members who serve on the WMATA Board of Directors. At least, if they, themselves could not have come, they could have sent their representatives with some kind of statement. I have an idea that one big reason for the press not showing up was that no one thought to send out any press releases. I’m going to check and see if there are any mentions in the various papers today, but somehow I doubt if I’ll find any.

As I said earlier, I do appreciate Metro’s attempt, puny though it was, to put on a token event for us, but there simply wasn’t much thought put into this. I’m sorry to say, but I could have done a better job. Not to toot my own horn, but I have done a better job when it comes to planning events. Maybe the next time Metro wants to put on a shindig for the disability community, I’ll offer my services, and we’ll have a real party going on!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 12th, 2006 at 4:37 am and is filed under WMATA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.