4 years later, city's cabs still leave wheelchair
users sitting
Author(s): Mark Brown The Chicago
Sun-Times Date: July 9, 2006 Page: A02 Section:
News
What Eric Lipp would really like is to be able to go to the curb
and hail a taxicab like anybody else -- his ability to do so is complicated by
the fact he uses a wheelchair. He dreams of a day when Chicago's entire taxi
fleet is equipped to accommodate wheelchairs -- and believes that day is nearer
than it seems.
But in the meantime, he would just like to call for one of
the limited number of accessible cabs now available and get it in a timely
manner.
This doesn't strike me as unreasonable. Lipp and many fellow
wheelchair users aren't looking for a subsidized ride, just an opportunity to
spend their money.
Neither, though, had it struck me as unreasonable when
Lipp made the same points nearly four years ago, as we spent a sometimes
frustrating workday together so I could see the challenges faced by people with
disabilities while attempting to navigate the city by cab.
Unfortunately,
despite some improvements, getting an accessible cab in a timely manner is still
not the reality, as I recently saw when we reprised our unscientific test of the
taxi system.
As we had in 2002, we started at Lipp's Lake View condo by
placing an 8:20 a.m. call to Flash Cab.
"I need an accessible
taxi," Lipp told the dispatcher.
"What do you mean? Handicapped?"
asked the dispatcher.
"Yeah, handicapped," Lipp said, grudgingly using
the word.
The dispatcher said it would be a 30- to 40-minute
wait.
Fair enough. You can't expect to call a cab at rush hour and have it
there at a moment's notice. We used the time to catch up.
Lipp, 36, said
he spends more time these days in a wheelchair or electric scooter than when we
first met, even though he can still get around with a cane. He suffers from von
Hippel Lindau Disease, a genetic condition that caused a tumor to grow on his
spine, temporarily rendering him a quadriplegic at age 30. He partially
recovered but still has limited use of his legs and an uncertain
prognosis.
40 down, 30 to go
The biggest changes for Lipp
are the 2-year-old son tossing various balls our way as we talk and the baby
daughter in another room, which helps explain the increased wheelchair
use.
Lipp says his doctors employed this argument to get him off his
feet: "Say you've only got 1,000 steps left in life; are you going to spend them
walking through airports or playing with your kids?"
At 9 a.m., the cab
dispatcher called back to say the wait, then at the 40-minute mark, would be
another 30 minutes. This actually showed improvement from 2002. Back then, they
didn't call; they just left you twisting in the wind.
When we'd met, Lipp
was in the early stages of starting the Open Doors Organization, a
not-for-profit with a mission to give people with disabilities the same consumer
opportunities as non-disabled people.
What set Open Doors apart was
Lipp's concept of working cooperatively with businesses to teach them how they
could make money by taking simple steps to be more accessible.
In the
last four years, this non-adversarial approach coupled with Lipp's just-do-it
attitude has achieved much success in making the travel and hospitality
industries in particular more aware of the market they were missing.
Now
he gets written up in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal as a national
authority on traveling with disability. Airlines bring him in to help redesign
procedures, such as how to improve wheelchair check-in. Cruise lines seek his
advice.
Praise, then powerlessness
"I'm here about solutions. I'm
not here about ideas," he tells them. "This is what you have to do."
Open
Doors also has a program to provide refurbished computers to individuals with
disabilities and runs an awareness program with the Girl Scouts. They've even
spun-off a for-profit business to rent motorized scooters to travelers, part of
a program to create businesses that employ people with disabilities.
The
cab arrived at 9:15. Not bad. Not good either, for a businessman with all that
on his plate. The driver, one of a relative few who specialize in driving the
wheelchair-accessible vans, is courteous and efficient and quickly gets us to
Open Doors offices on Clark Street.
A few hours later, we're hungry and
resolve to return to the Bucktown cafe we visited four years earlier. The cab
arrives in 30 minutes. The ever-optimistic Lipp tells me the city-imposed
central dispatch center for accessible cabs, in its infancy at our first
meeting, really has brought improvement for riders.
After lunch, he wants
to eat his words as the wait for our return trip grows to 90 minutes. We run out
of small talk, and the gnawing sense of powerlessness returns.
As a
steady succession of empty cabs drive by the restaurant window, he tells me he
doesn't want to call for cabs anymore.
"I want to wheel out there and
raise my arm. That, to me, is when I'll know we made it."
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