I would describe myself as a very straight-laced, by the book person. I read and follow instructions. I don’t cross on red lights. I wait for the dry cycle to finish before taking my cloths out. I brush my teeth for exactly two minutes each morning… Well, I assume it’s two minutes anyway. I brush until the beep goes off on my brush which I assume is two minutes as that is the brush time recommended by 4 out of 5 dentists according to that one Colgate commercial I saw that time… But I digress. As a disabled individual, one ponders often about what is fair, and what isn’t. I’ve found that the best way to stay positive despite being dealt an unfair hand is to play by the rules. Rules are simple. Straight-forward. Follow them, and things work out. Don’t follow them, and, well they might not.

For this reason, I’ve never really taken issue with SEPTA’s accessibility. Or perhaps, more aptly, lack of accessibly. SEPTA is the 5th largest overall transit system in the county, with 290 active stations and over 490 miles of track. It commands 2,295 revenue vehicles running 196 routes. SEPTA was formed in 1963 after absorbing its two predecessors, The Passenger Services Improvement Corporation and The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Compact. Much of the infrastructure that SEPTA inherited was built by the Reading Company and Pennsylvania Railroad. So it’s old. Like, Monopoly old.

It’s no wonder that the majority of SEPTA’s rail stations are not wheelchair accessible. Many people, upon learning this fact, lament how unfair that is and how frustrating that must be for me. Honestly, up until recently, it was not. Sure, it is annoying that most of the stops are not accessible to me. But what is SEPTA to do? It would require literally hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit each of its inaccessible stations. In swoops the ADA to the rescue. Can’t provide accessible fixed route service for the disable population due to undue hardship? No problem. In lieu of such service, a public transit authority must provide paratransit services that are “equal in level of service” to that of their fixed route system. So when asked if SEPTA’s inaccessibility frustrated me, I’d reply with a happy “nope”, because I knew paratransit was there if I ever needed it. That was, until I started using it.

SEPTA’s paratransit service, or ParaStranded as I have not-so-affectionately dubbed it, is quite literally the embodiment of ineptitude. Seriously. If incompetence and indifference somehow talked demoralization into a three-way, the ambiguous love child product would be SEPTA’s paratransit service. In the two months that I have been using ParaStranded I have taken over twenty trips and only to or from my work office which is less than 5 miles from where I live. In those twenty three rides, ParaStranded has been late 19 times at an average 29 minutes late. And to be clear, 29 minutes late is actually 49 minutes late because ParaStranded doesn’t consider themselves late until 20 minutes after the scheduled pick-up time. What’s worse, they have flat out not shown up 5 times. That’s 5 times that I’ve been left to wait in the cold or rain or wind for a ride that would ultimately never show up. 5 out of 23. Think about that. If you only filed 18 out of the 23 Bitterman motions, or debugged 18 out of the 23 bad lines of code, or only put covers on 18 out of 23 TPS reports, do you think you’d keep your job? Probably not. You’d probably be fired. Don’t worry though, I’m sure you could get a job with SEPTA where it is apparently acceptable to just not show up to work one week each month… on average.

Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that ParaStranded’s ultimate goal is to discourage ridership and hide any evidence of their deficiencies. For starters, their scheduling system is a joke. By policy, they can offer you a pickup time plus or minus two hours from your requested time. So, say you want to be picked up at noon, they can technically offer you anytime between 10 AM and 2 PM. Side note: I’m pretty sure Comcast’s appointment windows aren’t even that big, and they’ve been rated worst in customer service for, like, ever. Does the time they offer just not work for you? Well, you’re in luck! ParaStranded will offer you an allowance to check for availability in the hour preceding or following your original request. So let’s go back to my noon pickup example. If you ask to be picked up at noon, they can, and likely will, offer you a time like 1:15 PM. Then you say, “actually that’s not gonna work for me. Do you have anything earlier?” So then they’ll check availability in the 11 o’clock hour. Keep in mind, if you had asked for 11 originally, you would have been offered a time between 45 and 75 minutes after that. But not now. Oh no. Because it’s the second check, you’ll be offered 9:20 AM.

Discouraged yet?

No? Oh good. Okay, let’s call to complain about a late ride. Oh wait, the call center is overloaded and your call wait time is 55 minutes. Pro tip: if your call wait time is more than 45 minutes, your ride ain’t coming.
How about now?

Still no? Great. So you’ve finally got someone on the phone. You explain that it is 8:20 and your 7:30 ride is still MIA. The operator is utterly confused because his system is showing that you were, in fact, picked up at 7:48 and dropped off at 8:05. Yup. It’s happened.

Now does any of that sound like “equal in level of service” to SEPTA’s fixed route system? Hells no. And it is most definitely, in my opinion, a violation of the ADA. Unfortunately, there are a multitude of reasons that ParaStranded has gotten away with this for so long. There are legal loop-holes and precedent that make bringing these types of suits both lengthy and expensive. But really, the brunt of the blame lies on me, and you, and everyone who uses their service and doesn’t speak up. They serve a demographic, many of whom just do not have the wherewithal or resources to make a big enough issue of the problem to affect change. Very early on in this ordeal, I reached out to a prominent Philadelphia attorney who has been known to take issue with SEPTA on disability rights in the past. He was shocked that I was having this problem and acted as if what I was saying was merely anecdotal. He very bluntly told me that he has not received a complaint about ParaStranded in over ten years, and did not believe the issue was as systemic as I described.

And that is on us. As a community, we can’t let this go on. If you are a ParaStranded user, keep notes of your travels. Pickup times, travel times and drop off times. The more evidence we can show, the better. Help me convince this attorney that my story is not just anecdotal. For more information, or to share your story, you can contact me or Jimmy.