“It’s a big issue. But I urge you to think about how rather than if it’s possible.”
— Keith Gurgui, systems advocate at Resource Center for Accessible Living
Broken down on the side of the road, walking for a gas station, forced to kill time in an airport after the news of a cancelled flight or missing a bus, everyone knows what it feels like to be stranded. To the able-bodied, these are minor and temporary inconveniences.
For a person afflicted with visual, auditory, ambulatory or age-related difficulties, getting stranded is an inconvenience in an entirely different kind. In the case of the wheelchair-bound, missing the last bus for the night might be a disaster with cascading consequences.
If one is a paraplegic paralyzed from the waist down, one can potentially roll the wide wheels over curbs and grassy fields if need be. But if one is paralyzed from the neck down, it’s not so simple.
Keith Gurgui, 32, wasn’t born with a spinal injury. Between the end of high school and the beginning of college, a diving accident while he was summering on a beach in Delaware landed him in a hospital for six months. He returned home to confront his new normal. His perspective was changed forever.
“Until you need all these public services,” said Gurgui, “you don’t really care. Well, I was 18 at the time, so I didn’t really care. But afterwards, you know, Medicaid, home care, public transportation, all these things I need.”
Access to transportation became significant in Gurgui’s life. For getting around the county, yes, but also a way to take part in the democratic process. As a representative for RCAL (Resource Center for Accessible Living), Gurgui recently addressed the county legislature Transportation Committee, pointing out that attending meetings at the county office building was near-impossible for those relying on public transportation.
Transit options
While the UCAT (Ulster County Area Transit) webpage lists its hours as from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., most fixed-route service options start later and end much sooner. The last bus leaving Kingston for New Paltz is at 7 p.m., the time the full county legislature begins its meetings each month. Woodstock’s last bus leaves Kingston at 7:45. If a resident of Ellenville wants to get home, they’d need to catch the 8:55 p.m. bus.
Anyone in Gurgui’s situation would find it impossible to participate in person, or at least to have to leave the meeting early in the fear of missing the last bus.
“I wrote a letter in coordination with our CEO,” said Gurgui, “in support of expanding transportation hours to sessions of the legislature and during county business hours.”
Expanding hours of service creates logistical problems even before adding routes is even considered. Fourteen census-designated places within Ulster County currently have no public transit whatsoever. Since UCAT is currently lacking three full-time and 15 part-time drivers, the idea of expanding service becomes a heavy lift even before cost is figured in.
Gurgui says he understands the complexity off adding buses.
“They have the Hooley on the Hudson thing they had a loop going for,” Gurgui said. “They had a loop running for the Resources for Accessible Living (RCAL) parade the week before that. And they had the shuttle-bus service for the Rosendale street parade, which ran every 30 minutes for nine hours on the days of the street festival.”
Of course, it’s not just the standard bus service Gurgui is talking about.
Lift-equipped public-transit options have become ubiquitous since the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into federal law in 1990. UCAT is required by the ADA to complement fixed-route public-transit service with paratransit.
“People who qualify fill out a long application,” Gurgui said, “and their doctors help them sign it, and then you are sort of under a special door-to-door program.”
The resident in need of service goes to the end of their driveway, and the bus service takes them where they need to go — some small compensation for the daily adversity they face. Because fixed routes are limited, this complimentary service doesn’t reach everyone.
Disability obstacles
Olive resident Zack Hilty also uses a wheelchair after a spinal injury when he was 22 years old.
“I dove into a swimming pool 13 years ago,” said Hilty, “and broke my neck.”
The consequences of his misjudgment were horrifically out of proportion to his action. It was bad luck, plain and simple.
“I was intoxicated at the time,” says Hilty. “You can use that.”
Hilty lives about 20 minutes from the closest bus route. Complementary paratransit service is unavailable to him. Instead, he relies upon private transportation paid for by Medicaid. Many residents of Ulster County who live in the more rural townships and villages like Denning, Ellenville, and the Gunks need to resort to this transportation solution.
Paratransit riders make up two or three percent of UCAT ridership. At the height of efficient operation in 2019, a year after absorbing the Kingston Citibus operation, that ridership accounted for eleven percent of total miles driven. The paratransit service currently serves around 2500 fewer customers, down from the high-water mark of 9845 paratransit riders.
In 2022, paratransit miles driven accounted for six percent of the total 68.733 miles driven.
As with traditional bus service, the money to fund the paratransit service comes from both state mass transportation operating assistance and federal funding. UCAT received $178,402 for its paratransit operations and $139,131 for ADA resources in 2022. Anything not funded from state and federal comes out of the pocket of the county taxpayer.
An estimated 22,972 residents in Ulster County residents (12.6 percent of the population) are afflicted with hearing, vision and/or ambulatory issues. Each disability presents its own unique obstacles to getting around. With the attendant complications of aging, both physical and mental, the legally A resolution to establish a policy to provide public transportation to county facilities and to sessions of the Ulster County Legislature waits in the wings while UCAT gets a comprehensive, countywide route study awarded to Foursquare Integrated Transportation Planning, Inc , off the ground. UCAT director Toni Roser expects that the study will be completed within six to eight months.
Back to virtual?
As an incremental step, Gurgui would like a return to the two-way video conferencing platforms, widely embraced during the pandemic, used at all committee meetings.
“Yeah, I want that,” said Gurgui. “I want it all. I think things should go back to virtual and then for paratransit needs to be available. And it’s not just paratransit, but for everybody.”
It’s an old saw that the moral test of a government is how it treats the most vulnerable among its citizens. To allow for their voices to be heard live and in the flesh at all legislative meetings would be a good start.
There is representation on the legislature for the disabled community currently. Legislator Craig Lopez suffered a high-level spinal-cord injury as a young man.
That representation will double if Lopez and Gurgui both succeed on November 7. Gurgui is running for the open seat in the Saugerties, Ulster, Town of Kingston district. If he wins, ensuring transportation options for all will be at the top of his agenda.
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