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From: Mary.Otten@p0.f1089.n261.z1.fidonet.org (Mary Otten)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: Paratransit
Message-ID: <16443@handicap.news>
Date: 25 Jun 91 15:43:09 GMT
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Index Number: 16443

[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]

I like your transit advice to Willy, and I agree about what the
priorities should be. Our paratransit system has an arbitrary boundary
accross which they will not go, no matter what, the Beltway. You can go
from one end of creation to the other, so long as it is within the
beltway and for whatevertrivial reason you choose, but, even if it is
for the doctor or a job, and the trip would only be 4 or 5 miles, if it
is outside the beltway, you may not go on paratransit. I had an
interesting experience trying to get on our paratransit consumer
committee. It seems they recently expanded this committee and I, as
President of our local ACB, but more importantly, as a user of both the
paratransit system and regular buses, depending upon the situation, and
also as a blind person with both caneandguidedog travel experience in
several large cities, tried to get on the board. Well, it seems they had
their quota of blind folks. Of course, the committtee is self
perpetuating, the chairman is a blind guy, and how he got there is
anybody's guess. The only reason I got for not being selected was that
they already had blind people. Qualifications or experience of those
people? Unknown. Most discouraging.

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