ST. LOUIS — Metro Transit is sticking with its plan to trim its paratransit van service area next week despite a new complaint disability rights advocates filed Friday with the U.S. Department of Justice.
The complaint alleged that Metro’s Call-A-Ride service hasn’t met minimum standards set by the federal government, following up a similar protest letter the groups sent last week to the Federal Transit Administration.
“We believe this transit agency has failed to comply with the complementary transit requirements of the Americans With Disabilities Act,” officials with the organizations said in an email to DOJ’s civil rights division.
Among those submitting the new complaint were representatives of Paraquad, the Starkloff Disability Institute, Easterseals Midwest, the Down Syndrome Association of Greater ӣƵ and three groups advocating for blind people.
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Salome Cummins, 5, is helped from a Metro bus by Carol Coulter, a National Federation of the Blind volunteer, on Chippewa Street near Hampton Avenue on Wednesday, July 27, 2016. Children attended a braille camp given by the Delta Gamma Center for Children with Visual Impairments, where they learned to handle their own money after taking public transportation to lunch. Photo by Robert Cohen, rcohen@post-dispatch.com
Metro’s executive director, Charles Stewart, in an interview repeated his agency’s point that the reduction in Call-A-Ride’s service area, which begins Monday, is aimed at addressing some of the very issues cited in the two complaints.
“Shorter trips within the new boundaries (is) improving our efficiency to provide better service” to those qualifying, Stewart said.
The change will eliminate service for some areas on the far north, south and west fringes of ӣƵ County beyond Interstate 270. Most of ӣƵ County and ӣƵ will continue to be covered.
Under federal rules, paratransit rides must be provided for trips beginning or ending within three-fourths of a mile of a Metro bus route or MetroLink station when a bus or train is in service.
Although Metro has reduced its regular bus service several times in recent years, it hasn’t downsized its Call-A-Ride area accordingly since 2016.
The changes also will bar any trip outside MetroLink or MetroBus service times, even in the reduced coverage area. Stewart said many people affected by that issue have been able to continue to qualify by agreeing to changes in their pickup times.
In the complaints, the disability rights groups say their employees and people they serve have been repeatedly denied Call-A-Ride trips, a situation that’s gotten worse with a shortage of Metro van drivers and other employees in recent years.
They also say Call-A-Ride customers typically have to call three days ahead to book a trip, despite a federal requirement of next-day service. And they say telephone wait times are much too long.
Speaking generally, Stewart said “we are acknowledging that these situations do exist” but said they are due partly to the agency overextending itself in recent years to provide rides to and from areas it’s not legally required to serve.
Metro has said about 250 regular customers would be affected by the change. In response, Jeanette Mott Oxford, a Paraquad official and a former state legislator, said every Call-A-Ride user will be affected in some way, because they no longer will be able to travel to locations that will now be out of the service area.
Oxford also asked how cutting 250 people off a system can “fix a problem that caused 18,000-plus trip denials” in January.
Oxford says that while Metro’s planned cuts to the routes and service times are allowed by the federal rules, the existing violations give the feds a reason to investigate. “We’re hoping the scrutiny would lead to improvements,” she said.
Stewart, the Metro official, said his agency is working to inform users affected by the cuts about other available paratransit services, such as those provided for people who qualify for Medicare. “Call-A-Ride was never meant to be the solution for the entire region,” he said.
The Justice Department did not respond Friday to a request for comment.
In January, the department reached a agreement with the city of Honolulu to take immediate steps to reduce telephone hold times for callers to its paratransit van service.
Late last year, a U.S. attorney’s office got a New Jersey transit agency’s van service to cut telephone hold times, improve the timeliness of pickups and dropoffs and make other improvements.
Another U.S. attorney’s office last October told the to improve its paratransit program.
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