Transportation

by Liz Iniro

Transportation has been one of the biggest challenges in my adult years. Being someone who is in a wheelchair, it’s a lot harder to get reliable transportation. Last March I went to the state house to talk to my representatives about my issues with transportation to which he told me that in my city public transportation is free and simple.  About a week later, I’m with my case coordinator and we are looking at the website it doesn’t have any information of what we’re looking for so we decided to call the number on the website we call and they don’t answer we call for the next two weeks and we finally get an answer the lady on the phone sounded like she’s in bad mood we start asking her about door to door pick up she tells us it’s actually five dollars but first we need to go on the website and apply then wait to get accepted. She explained to us how the transportation worked I can only use it for the surrounding city but when you go city to city, it’s eight dollars and when you give a time for pick up/drop off it won’t be exactly the time you want but rather it’s a 15 minute window and if you’re not out within three minutes they leave you. Not exactly free and simple.  After that we hung up and started the process of applying. It took a couple months to finish the process and get accepted. 

Fast forward and we’re in October. I have a doctor’s appointment at the end of the month and it’s about five minutes away from me but it’s in the next city.  We called to schedule a ride and ask if I still had to pay eight dollars even though it’s only five minutes away. They told us to call within seven to three days of needing to book a ride.  They hung up on us and never answered our questions.  It’s now five days until my appointment and it takes them about an hour to answer.  We tell them my appointment is at eleven and we ask them the question we had before and they said we still had to pay the eight dollars because I was going to a different city.  They told us they were going to call us the day before to tell us the times of pick up they called us the day before told me the first pick up time at my house was between 10:45-11:00 and they were picking me up from my appointment at three which was fine with me because my appointments are pretty long. It’s the next day and I don’t get picked up until 11:20. When the bus came it never honked the horn and the guy that was driving the bus didn’t really know how to use the lift.  Luckily my mom was there to show him how to use it.  When I finally got on the bus I saw there was an elderly woman on it. I thought we were going to drop her off first but we didn’t. I finally got to my appointment around 11:30. My appointment ended at one so my mom calls to see if I can get picked up early.  They told her no and that they have a schedule and they will pick me up at three. I waited in the lobby for two hours. It’s about 3:30 and they still haven’t come so my mom calls and they told her they are five minutes away. It’s now four and the bus still hasn’t come. My mom tries calling but no one is answering, the people at the front of the lobby are also calling.  My mom tells me she texted my aunt who works as a bus driver with a wheelchair van but she doesn’t get out until 4:30 so we’re waiting until one of them arrives.  It’s now 4:45 we see a bus outside we go to check it out and we see it’s my aunt she quickly puts me in the bus and we leave just about as we’re exiting the parking lot we see the other bus pass by us it was almost about to be five two hours after my original pick up. now this is just my story with transportation imagine all the other stories out there that people have.