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.
Padley's mother, Carole Hanson, refused to accept the ruling, which she said would put her son in too much danger. He would have to cross a busy street. He can't run. His autism prevents him from making quick decisions. He gets scared and confused and agitated, or he just freezes.
But Padley and Hanson eventually agreed he could ride the number 70 bus if UTA would show him how, even though they doubted it would work. It was the only way UTA would continue to consider Padley for paratransit.
"I understand where [UTA] is coming from," Hanson said. "But it's kind of a blackmail."
UTA disagreed. "Paratransit is not about identifying disabilities; it's about determining functionality for riding our system," said paratransit manager Cherryl Beveridge. Padley had shown ability to ride the bus when he had a different job years ago. Besides, she said, if UTA didn't enforce such a policy, the paratransit program would be "a segregated system," and that would contradict federal law.
No barriers: People who disagree with UTA decisions on their paratransit eligibility can appeal to a three-person panel made up of a doctor, a UTA lawyer and someone from the disabled community. Activist Barbara Toomer, director of the Disabled Rights Action Center, often sits on the panels.
"The majority of people who are disabled can ride the main system," said Toomer, who uses a wheelchair.
In the 1980s, Toomer organized a civil-disobedience "crawl-in" to force UTA to install lifts on UTA buses. "I didn't do it so people would stay on paratransit," she said. "But we realize some people need paratransit."
April Motley, also of Salt Lake City, has unconditional access to paratransit. Born with spina bifida, she uses double crutches to walk, and can lift her feet no more than four inches off the ground.
At the new UTA Mobility Center next to the Murray North TRAX station, Motley tried but couldn't make it through the entire course of ramps, gravel paths and a bus with a motorized lift set up to test paratransit riders before they take assisted rides on the train.
Riding paratransit vans means she often endures long waits and long trips because she is only one of several passengers headed for different stops. She doesn't mind. "There's compromise everywhere in life," she said. And she agrees with UTA's efforts to tighten eligibility.
Imperfect world: Padley has some physical problems, but his autism limits his ability to deal with unfamiliar situations.
Still, in August he accepted UTA's offer to teach him how to get to and from the Pizza Hut job he has held for 10 years. UTA agreed to drive him to and from the bus stop because he can't walk the steep hill to the home he shares with his sister and her family.
The first day, Padley rode the number 70 bus with a "buddy" who was ready to intervene if anything went wrong. A UTA staffer followed the bus in a car, as did his mother.
The bus ride was smooth. But when Padley pushed the pedestrian light button at his stop at 200 North in Kaysville, the green-man "walk" symbol never appeared because the signal was broken. The UTA trainers told Padley how to cross the three other intersections instead. But the metal light poles made him nervous, and he kept stepping too close to the street while the lights were still red.
When they got to the Pizza Hut, it was 10 minutes before opening time and no one was there. When Hanson and the UTA helpers tried to teach Padley how to evaluate his options, it was clear he'd had enough.
"His shoulders slumped, his head hung and he froze," Hanson said. "I started to cry. I just realized he's never going to be able to do this, no matter what."
Off the bus: Still, they tried four more times. He made friends on the bus. Kaysville fixed the Main Street pedestrian light. He nevertheless knew how to use the other three intersections and crossed them on his own.
But because of work on Interstate 15 in Ogden, the number 70 arrived late or early, messing up Padley's sense of order. His paratransit van left before he got home on a late bus. His trainers got him to and from work safely every time, but Padley and his family decided riding the bus and crossing streets was too risky.
"Unfortunately, the world isn't perfect," said his sister, Lisa Adamson. "That was our whole point.''
UTA said it would continue to shadow Padley by having people at the bus stops to step in if trouble arose. However, Padley wouldn't be told who the people were, because UTA wanted him to learn independence.
The family said no. Hanson on Sept. 27 will face the appeals panel in hopes UTA will grant her son unconditional paratransit status. She is ready to pursue a lawsuit and already has contacted the Disability Law Center in Salt Lake City for assistance.
Padley's job is on hold, and the buddy rides are over, he said.
"I had problems of some sort every day," he said. "Me and my mom just don't like that. Who knows if they're going to meet me at my destinations or whatever?"
If he had his choice, "I would say, 'Come pick me up at my house and take me directly to work, and come pick me up at work and take me directly to my house, just like I always had.' "
That's not likely, said Beveridge. "It's a sad situation," she said. "We think we had success. He demonstrated he knew how to navigate the system on his own."
Paratransit challenges
In 1990, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act in order to remove barriers to equal opportunity by making transit systems fully accessible to people with disabilities. A component of that bill required transit agencies to provide paratransit service for people who are functionally unable to use the regular system. Agencies had until 1995 to get the service rolling.
The mandate came with no funds to pay for it. As with many other agencies around the nation, UTA had to meld the expensive service into its operations while also fitting buses with lifts or ramps and designing accessibility into the light-rail system.
The feds predicted that paratransit service would shrink as more people were able to use buses and trains. The opposite happened. From 1990 to 1995, ridership grew from about 16 million nationwide to more than 45 million, according to a 1998 study by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Science.
The national trend now is to cut paratransit ridership, both to get people into the mainstream and to cut costs. UTA figures the full cost of providing a ride on the mainstream transit is $3.22 per passenger, while each paratransit ride cost about $31, which is consistent with other transit agencies. In 2005 UTA spent $12 million serving about 4,100 riders.
