[nagdu] COTA sued again over compliance with disabilities act

[Ginger Kutsch]

COTA sued again over compliance with disabilities act
Sunday, January 9, 2011  11:51 PM 
By Robert Vitale
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/01/0
9/cota-sued-again-over-compliance-with-disabilities-act.html?sid=
101
The Columbus Dispatch 
 
On a recent sunny day, Christopher Cooley stood about a foot from
the curb in front of a Downtown bus stop.
 
Although COTA drivers are told to stop right in front of
passengers with obvious disabilities, a bus pulled past Cooley,
who had to jostle with other passengers to ask where the bus was
headed.
 
Then he asked the driver why he stopped so far from him.
 
"I didn't see you," the driver said.
 
Cooley, whose vision is far worse than the legal standard for
blindness, was wearing a bright-yellow-and-blue coat and standing
next to his guide dog, a golden retriever.
 
If this were an unusual occurrence, Cooley would have shrugged
off the incident as an inconvenience. But he said the Central
Ohio Transit Authority routinely makes it difficult for him to
take the bus.
 
And for the third time in 10 years, COTA is defending itself from
complaints that it ignores key provisions of a federal law that
outlaws discrimination and ensures access to public buildings and
transportation for people with disabilities.
 
Cooley has filed a federal lawsuit alleging "systematic failure"
by COTA to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
 
The suit contends that COTA drivers do not stop in front of
disabled people and do not announce routes. An automated system
that is supposed to announce routes when the doors open often
does not work, the suit says.
 
Cooley, 33, who moved from Westerville to Grandview Heights to
live closer to COTA routes, said the problems mean he misses
classes at Columbus State Community College, arrives late to his
internship at the Ohio State School for the Blind and gets
dropped off in unfamiliar neighborhoods.
 
"When I have to get off at a different area I don't know, I start
to get shaky inside; then my vision gets really blurry," he said.
"I have to tell myself to keep calm."
 
COTA was sued in 2000 by the National Federation for the Blind,
and it agreed as part of a settlement to make sure its drivers
announced stops. In 2004, Federal Transit Administration
officials came to Columbus to investigate complaints about COTA's
treatment of disabled riders.
 
Bill Lhota, COTA's president and chief executive officer,
wouldn't comment on Cooley's lawsuit, but he said the transit
authority takes the federal law seriously.
 
"I'm confident we have in place all the things that are required
from an ADA standpoint," he said.
 
Barbara Corner, a lawyer with the Ohio Legal Rights Service who
worked on the 2000 lawsuit, said COTA agreed to monitor its
adherence with ADA standards for several years. Complying with
the law 80 percent of the time was considered adequate in the
industry, she said.
 
As Cooley waited for a bus to take him home Tuesday afternoon, a
Dispatch reporter kept tallies on COTA buses that pulled up to
the stop on N. High Street between Gay and Long streets.
 
The Dispatch found that:
 
. The automated route announcement system worked on six of 39
buses.
 
. Twenty-two of 39 drivers stopped in front of Cooley or other
disabled passengers.
 
. Twenty-five drivers told Cooley where their buses were headed.
 
Corner, who is blind, said an occasional failure to meet ADA
standards isn't enough to win a court case. But from her
experiences of missing unannounced stops, COTA isn't living up to
its obligations, she said.
 
Other disabled riders have similar complaints.
 
Irwin Hott said he made it his 2011 resolution to start calling
COTA again when things go wrong. He said he stopped for a while
because it seemed to do no good.
 
Hott, who is legally blind and lives on the North Side, said he
once ended up at the wrong intersection when the driver didn't
announce the stop. When he complained, the driver pointed at a
pay phone.
 
Cooley said he once was dropped off on the West Side because a
driver didn't announce the stop at Broad and High. There had been
a shooting near the West Side stop.
 
"Everyone has stories," said Corner, who now carries a GPS device
that tells her where she is.
 
rvitale at dispatch.com