EDITORIAL: Keep it rolling: The MTA must continue a pilot for people with disabilities that's proven to be a rousing success

March 10-- Mar. 10--In seven weeks, the MTA is set to end a phenomenally successful pilot program that let people with disabilities get rides in wheelchair accessible yellow and green taxis instead of relying on the dreaded white vans in the atrocious Access-A-Ride fleet.

Officials must re-up the pilot. In fact, they must expand it as quickly as possible.

Access-A-Ride is a parade of indignities. The vans must be scheduled days in advance. They are perpetually late. They make multiple stops. They cost taxpayers $82 per ride. (The riders themselves pay the price of a standard bus or subway fare.) And when passengers -- people with disabilities, remember -- aren't on time, they get marks against them and can get booted out of the service.

The pilot, a rare breath of common sense, let riders call cars on demand. They showed up on time and went point to point. They cost taxpayers $30 per ride. It worked so well that the lucky 1,200 users (less than 1% of Access-A-Ride patrons) actually used it. A lot.

Leave it to the MTA to be undecided on whether to keep or dump a huge innovation for people people with disabilities.

Even as the subways they run just scaled back Transit Authority chief Andy Byford's plans to add elevators to 50 more subway stations in our painfully inaccessible system. Even as a federal judge just reiterated their obligation to install elevators when renovating stations.

What the hell?

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