| Mobility Unlimited attempts to lift burden after Route 4's closure
When a bus route past his workplace closed earlier this month, Mark Towery took a week off the job just to plot how he would get around town. Wheelchair bound, Towery is relying on friends, co-workers and taxis while a local nonprofit agency readies a van for him to drive. The 33-year-old is just one in a group of disabled riders formerly reliant on Rogue Valley Transportation District's Route 4 that Mobility Unlimited can assist, said executive director Glory Cooper. "The services have been cut where they're most needed," Cooper said. A $1.2 million shortfall in RVTD's budget coupled with low ridership prompted the Sept. 1 closure of Route 4 past Rogue Valley Medical Center. RVTD's Valley Lift also was discontinued in that area because federal funding for the service is directly linked to the proximity of bus routes.
FEATURE - India's downtrodden disabled find power in the law
BANGALORE (Reuters) - When disabled Hindu worshippers in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu were blocked from entering temples with their wheelchairs and crutches, Meenakshi Balasubramanian knew she had the law on her side. The disabled rights activist, who herself has polio, sued the temple authorities in the state's high court, and won. Today, she said, temples must provide wheelchairs to disabled visitors if they ban them from bringing in their own medical equipment on the basis the devices are ritually impure. "I do feel it's our right, a religious right, a fundamental right," Balasubramanian said. "We need to be allowed to worship the way we want to." Tired of waiting for the government to safeguard their rights to pray, work, learn and travel, India's 22 million disabled people are increasingly turning to the courts.
One of Washington's dirty little secrets: How to avoid ...
You won't believe this. Or maybe you will if you run and hide when you hear, "Hi, we're from your government, and we're here to help you."
In this case, the chilling greeting comes from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), those wonderful folks who since 9/11 (under strict orders from the recently-resigned Secretary Norman Mineta) have been wanding little old ladies from Keokuk, Iowa, at America's airports all in the name of political correctness. DOT now has decided that it will apply the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in such a manner as to make it theoretically easier for the wheelchair-bound to board passenger trains.
There is just one problem, and in a metaphorical sense, it comes under the heading of the old gag, "The operation was a great success, but the patient died."
DOT has proposed a rule requiring that every single passenger train platform in the United States (1) stretches the full length of the longest train that serves the route, and (2) provides level (no steps) boarding for all doors.
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