By Ed Lowe
Senior Writer
The City's Taxi Access Program (TAP) has been around for several years as an aid to the handicapped. The program works like this. After a rigid qualification process, those approved by the CTA are given an identity card which enables them to buy vouchers for cab rides. With the voucher, which now costs $1.75, the user is allowed access to any cab in the city and can ride any distance up to a $12 meter fare. After that, the rider must pay the difference. Cab drivers are reimbursed the amount shown on their meters plus an additional $1.25 for the time it takes to do the necessary paper work. All cabs licensed in the city are required to accept the vouchers.
The purpose of the program is to help those handicapped people unable to reach regular CTA transit lines on foot, to get around the city. With bus service being cut back or eliminated on some lines and with the service at off peak hours being drastically reduced, the TAP program offers a way for the handicapped to go about their business in the city without incurring the cost of normally expensive taxi rides.
That's the good news. The problems with the system lie with the personnel running it. The telephone numbers listed on the TAP brochure are almost inevitably answered by a voice mail message. Calls are rarely returned and questions are answered only after repeated attempts to contact a "live" voice. The CTA's Paratransit Operations Headquarters might be understaffed, or it may simply be a matter of bureaucratic inefficiency, but the personnel at the center never seem able to answer phone calls to the number listed in the TAP handbook.
Purchasing the vouchers is so difficult that it has become almost a self-defeating portion of the program. Only at CTA headquarters in the Merchandise Mart can the vouchers be purchased in person. This requires someone who is admittedly handicapped to go to the cashier's office in the Mart with either cash, credit card or money order to buy the vouchers. This is the only place in town where they are issued on the spot.
Alternate ways of buying the vouchers are at the City's senior service centers. On the North Side, the only such facility is at the Levy Center at Lawrence and Damen avenues. A handicapped person is required to appear, present the proper application and identification for the vouchers, and pay for them in cash. No credit cards are accepted here. Then, the vouchers are ordered and delivered within a two week interval. The applicant is called and required to make another trip to the center to pick them up. There are four other such centers throughout the City operated by the Chicago Department On Aging.
While personnel at the Levy Center are much more accommodating than those affiliated with the CTA, it is a cumbersome process. Anyone buying the vouchers has an ID card issued by the CTA after the initial interview. The Center should, but is unable to, issue vouchers on the spot as a convenience to the handicapped people needing and qualifying for them.
There is one other way in which these vouchers are made available. By purchasing a bank money order and mailing the request for vouchers in to the CTA, the process is supposed to be completed by mail. We are aware of at least one instance where this process was followed but the vouchers never reached the applicant. The CTA personnel reported that the vouchers had been mailed and that there was nothing they could do if they weren't received. According to them, the vouchers were "lost" in the mail. There was no return call to answer the applicant who inquired of CTA personnel whether the mailing had been returned to the CTA, nor was there any way to stop misuse of the vouchers or to replace the money spent. There's no way to trace the vouchers that had allegedly been mailed and, according the person victimized by this situation, no one willing to accept responsibility for their replacement.
Thus, the applicant had purchased a money order, which was cashed, but received nothing for his money. Obviously, this is unacceptable, yet the CTA is not willing to address the problem. It's a problem that no one seems willing to address.
Over all, the voucher program works well and, despite the bureaucratic chaos in its administration, it helps those who have qualified and who are too far from bus transportation or whose travel needs are not met by regular CTA service in the city. |
