I am from New York moving to Delaware. Any state I travel to I find out about the para-transportation there and request and receive a visitors pass from that state. While preparing for my first visit to Delaware my sister kept warning me that transportation on Saturdays ends around 4:00 PM, and on Sundays it does not run at all. I am sure I had some choice words about that. I do not remember what they were. Still, my mind was prepared to get there on Saturday, but my body would not allow it.
Sunday afternoon my son and I arrived in Delaware and because it was Easter Sunday we had to go to my sister's place first for dinner. The car service cost $12.00. Later that evening we had to pay $15.00 to get to our hotel. I wished for Dart, because it would have cost me a total of $6.00. Not $27.00 plus $6.00 in tips.
I do wonder about the disabled church goer? The disabled person trying to get to a function which starts at 8:00 PM and ends at 12:00 midnight? The disabled shift worker whose hours are 4:00 PM to 12:00 AM. The non-disabled workers that has to rely on public transportation to get them to work at 11:00 PM but the public bus cut off time in their county may be between 9:30 PM to 10:00 PM. What if their job is two hours away? Should they leave early? What if they have children and pay for a babysitter? Or what if transportation for both disabled and non-disabled riders were 24/7? Expand the hours. Expand the ridership. Expand the profits.
There is a Disability Ball that most depending solely on Para- transportation cannot attend, because of the 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM time frame. It is in Wilmington. Depending on which county you are in it may take two to three hours to get there using Para-transportation and the bus connectors. The bus connectors sometimes run every one to two hours. Again, depending on the county and their cut off time for riding.
So you may get to the Disability Ball at 6:00 PM, but need to leave at 7:00 PM, because you need to get back to your county which has a cut off time of 9:00 PM. It may takes two hours to get there. So why go? What fun would that be? Let us not forget the cost to get there for two buses there and two buses back. Again, depending on the county $4.00 to $6.00 for each bus getting there. To $4.00 to $6:00 getting back. That is $8.00 to $12.00 to get there, and $8.00 to $12.00 to get back. That totals $16.00 to $24.00 for that event. With the possibility of only spending an hour there.
There is word that Dart First State Para-Transportation wants to raise the fare. For limited transportation? How is this okay?
We the disabled travelers may have physical and mental health issues, but we have 24/7 lives. Delaware's transportation should mirror our full lives, because we are not half human beings.
