As co-chair of the HandyDART Riders’ Alliance, since last October I’ve been sitting on a task force set up by TransLink. Our mandate is to advise TransLink on HandyDART issues. The creation of this task force and the appointment of many individuals from the HandyDART community to it is another indicator of the positive working…
Category: HandyDART
As TransLink turns a page
Those of you familiar with the HandyDART file will be aware of the fact that a few years ago TransLink awarded this very important contract to a for-profit, privately owned American company based in Dallas, Texas. Users and workers have been complaining about the quality of service ever since. A group I’m with, the HandyDART…
Has TransLink turned the corner?
On Wednesday, March 30, a number of HandyDART users spoke to the TransLink board at their monthly meeting in New Westminster. Together with HandyDART drivers, we were lobbying TransLink to bring HandyDART service in-house. Whereas conventional public transit is operated by TransLink through a number of wholly owned subsidiaries — Coast Mountain Bus Company operates…
Lots of cake to go around
The provincial government’s decision to raise income assistance rates for people with disabilities with one hand then reduce those rates with the other has been in the news lately. Before the changes were announced, anybody forced to live on the paltry amount of $906 a month (a rate frozen since 2007) also received a free…
Time to “tap out” TransLink’s senior managers
Most folks are surprised when I tell them that TransLink spends 10 cents of every farebox dollar on the process of actually collecting that dollar. Economists refer to this as the “friction cost.” By comparison, the collection of income tax is incredibly efficient, with a friction cost so small that it amounts to a rounding…
Let’s put HandyDART users back in the driver’s seat
As co-chair of the HandyDART Riders’ Alliance, I was scheduled to speak at the public session of the TransLink Board of Directors’ meeting in New Westminster on Wednesday. (Check out CBC Radio’s coverage of some of the points raised by my co-chair, Beth McKellar, here as well as a video clip of some of the…
Sliding safety standards don’t work in taxis
Recent media coverage has shone a light on the story about the mother of a young infant who was told by the driver of the taxi she had just boarded along with her husband, who uses a wheelchair, that it would take too much time to buckle the baby into the car seat. He advised…