On Wednesdays in the summer, when Chris is playing golf, I depend on the state paratransit system, known as RIde, to get home from work. "Paratransit" is the word used for the accessible, equivalent, door-to-door transportation required of all public transit authorities by the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA requires that this service be available for disabled riders who are unable to get to bus stops and/or board a regular bus unassisted.
Here in Rhode Island, paratransit service comes with a lot of rules. You must schedule your ride at least a day in advance - no spontaneously deciding you want to go somewhere... yet this is considered equivalent to regular public transit. You're at their scheduling mercy - "officially" you may be picked up anytime from ten minutes before to twenty minutes after the time you request, but it is often much farther outside this window on either end. They suggest calling to find out exactly when they plan to pick you up, but this is useless, since what they tell you usually has no correlation to reality. No matter how early they are, you must be ready to go within five minutes or they will leave without you and mark you as a "no-show". No matter how late they are, if you catch a ride with someone else, even after letting them know, you're a no-show. If they schedule your ride wrong and try to pick you up where they should be dropping you off, you're a no-show. If they don't give the driver the pickup directions you've placed on your file repeatedly and he waits five minutes at the wrong place, you're a no-show. Get an excessive number of no-shows (the word "excessive" being completely undefined), and they will remove you from the program permanently. You're constantly treated like they are doing you a favor, despite the fact that you're paying twice the regular bus fare. And again, this is considered "equal" bus access.
Yesterday I waited forty-five minutes for my ride home before calling the office to see what was up. Aside from the fact that the first three times the rep looked me up in the system she couldn't even find a scheduled ride, when she did finally find me there was no explanation as to why the bus hadn't shown up. They just called a taxi cab which picked me up ten minutes later (fortunately at their expense... I only paid my usual $3.50 fare). I got home an hour later than I should have. I was already in a bad mood when I got off work. I'd had a headache since first thing in the morning, which wasn't being helped by aspirin or anything else. I was tired and grumpy and I just wanted to go home. And then I had to deal with RIde bullshit on top of it all.
I melted down when I got home, because I was just so pissed off, it was all I could do. It wasn't just because of this one experience, though my initial mood and headache didn't help any. It was because every time I use this service, it's this massively stressful experience. What time are they going to come today? Should I call and try to get a pickup time, if I can even get through? Should I trust that I can continue working up until the time they tell me, or am I going to be caught in the middle of something I can't just stop? Are they going to give the driver the directions to my building, and if the driver can't find me, will he/she call for clarification or just sit outside the wrong building for five minutes and leave? Am I going to get a nice and helpful driver this time, or a lazy fatass who gets annoyed that they have to get out of their seat and help me up the steps? Will this driver be someone who believes in taking showers? Will they listen to me when I tell them they've driven right by the condo entrance, or will they treat me like I don't know what I'm talking about? I stress about these things all day long, and the whole thing is a completely horrid experience that I never want to go through again. But I will, the following Wednesday. Thankfully, next week is the last time for this year. After that, I'm really hoping to find some other arrangement, because I really do not want to deal with this anymore.
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