| All sides feel anxiety over Dial-A-Ride
With a low, hydraulic whir, a Dial-A-Ride van extends a black steel welcome mat to Vivian Armendariz outside her apartment in northeast Fort Collins. A push of a joystick later, the 34-year-old Armendariz, who has spina bifida, backs her wheelchair onto the ramp, which lifts her into the van for an afternoon shopping trip to Target. .
Man loses paratransit ride
For the past four years, Utah Transit Authority's efforts to get more people out of paratransit vans and onto buses and TRAX has been working, thanks to stepped-up enforcement of eligibility standards.
UTA's goal was to shrink costs without hampering disabled riders' access to their wider communities. The agency believes it has been successful.
But this month, UTA's paratransit manager denied further service to Matthew Padley, a 31-year-old North Salt Lake resident whose family doesn't believe he can ride the bus safely.
Padley has had brain damage since birth. He is autistic, obsessive-compulsive, has club feet and severe arthritis. But because paratransit evaluators examine riders' mental and physical abilities, not their maladies, UTA declared Padley could ride paratransit vans only under certain conditions.
Travel Buddies help get John moving
JOHN Wilson never had the confidence to travel far from home-always worried he would get stuck in his wheelchair and wouldn't be able to get back to the East End because of inaccessible buses and Tube. So he kept to his Poplar neighbourhood, never venturing much further than a few blocks form his home in North Street. It wasn't much of a life. At 58, John has spent the last 18 years stuck in his wheelchair. Now City Hall has taken a 'step' further with its 'buddy squad' of travel assistants to advise those like John on how to get around. "It has changed my life because it's given me the confidence to get out and about," he points out. "Until I got tips from my travel assistant, I never knew exactly which areas were safe to use, so I stayed close to home. "But now there's no stopping me-it's a dream getting on the DLR.
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