Deadlines set to show ASI improvements (5)

Los Angeles city councilman Bill Rosendahl said at the end of the March 26 hearing he was disgusted to hear so many complaints from the disabled community against ASI, an agency that tags its budget at $90 million a year.

“I’m in shock and I am stunned. I’m actually ashamed that (ASI) services are not up to it,” Rosendahl said. He said those in the public transportation management should not be in the business if ASI services don’t improve.

“There’s no excuse at all for not giving dignity and respect to the disabled. I heard comments drivers being disrespectful, showing cavalier behavior. This is totally unacceptable. Period. I don’t want to sit in another meeting like this about how they’d been treated and, frankly abused.”

ASI is engaged in a series of three sub-contracting models, to fully operate their nearly 900 vans across the Los Angeles County. The third and most important, called group sub-contracting, entails the purchase of services from Access Paratransit by contractors based on costs. The subcontractors rent the minivans at $1 a year, and print the name of Access Paratransit.

These agencies receive portions of federal grants to run operations. The subcontractors are Global Paratransit Inc., San Gabriel Transit, Southland Transit, MV Transportation, and the city of Santa Clarita. MV Transportation covers most of the San Fernando Valley’s ride reservations and dispatches of Access Services vans. Most Access Paratransit operations are run by these five subcontractors.

The San Gabriel Transit agency, for whom Diego Soriano Lopez worked, owns at least three repair and maintenance warehouses in the San Gabriel Valley. It also operates several others in the Los Angeles County, and one in San Diego County.

The American with Disability Act (ADA) uses the name Access Paratransit to identify the special transportation vehicles for disabled people in Los Angeles County.

The ASI audit issued 16 recommendations to improve current decaying working conditions. Among the points the audit adviced to improve within six months are:

* The agency needs to improve its management and oversight of paratransit service providers, and to require all subcontractors to perform driver performance evaluations annually. It needs to keep the evaluations in the drivers’ personal files for periodic ASI reviews,

* It should develop a standard driver code of conduct and require each driver to sign and agree to such conduct,
* It should develop a written manual of procedures for processing and inputting complaints, and ensure that the list of complaints type codes and definitions are kept up to date,
* It must reinforce ASI’s goal of providing courteous and quality service to clients.
* To reassess its recertification policy, and
* To evaluate the scheduling system to minimize or eliminate circuitous routing of share rides and to ensure the routing/dispatching methodology minimizes wait times and trip times.

Councilwoman Greuel said she wanted a full report on advances in the implementation of the audit’s report six months after it was issued. City of Los Angeles councilmembers have yet to program a hearing on the audit’s implementations.

I wanted to make public the situation thousands of ASI rides live every day, and how this company operates so that public pressure against ASI can prompt tangible changes for the betterment of our disabled. Disabled seniors and students, adults and adolescents, whether they are males or females are the segment most discriminated against in many areas in our society, and poor, mediocre transportation services adds to this discrimination.

For my part, I’ll continue trying to give voice to a community I personally care about, that has historically been ostracized, and forgotten in all media news coverage. I was blessed with a brother whose physical presence is no longer with me, but who taught me many good lessons about how to move on and be persistent despite blatant discrimination.