In 2009, 970,000 people registered as disabled in the state of Tennessee, according to the American Community Survey.
According to a 2013 Fact Sheet released by the World Health Organization, approximately 15 percent of the world’s population has some form of disability. And for this group, a lack of accessible transportation can prove a serious societal barrier.
At UT, the T-Access bus is the primary transit service for handicapped students, operating Monday-Friday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. But on the weekend, the T-Access is not in service.
“There’s about 168 hours in a week, [and the] only time we don’t operate is 22 hours a week,” said Mark Hairr, the director of Parking and Transit Services. “We operate 90 percent of the time.”
Operational for more than a decade, Hairr said weekend T-Access routes have never been considered necessary. Even prior to the existence of the T-Access and similar private disabled van operations, weekend routes were not included in the transit schedule.
Hairr stated the Office of Parking and Transit Services will receive one or two inquiries each year about the bus’s schedule.
“The campus population is so much smaller on the weekends,” Hairr said. “We do 30,000 trips coming into campus every weekday for classes; it’s obviously a much different story on the weekends.”
Transportation fees help fund bus services. However, they cannot cover the full extent of services, and approximately $600,000 is funded through the Office of Parking and Transit Services. Because of subsidy concerns, Hairr believes that any decision to expand service must be made carefully.
“A particular situation may come up, but we’ve got to look at the bigger picture of, if we’re going to run service from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends, what kind of ridership could we generate?” Hairr said. “It gets costly hour after hour after hour not doing much service or carrying many students.”
Hairr defended this cost analysis, saying Transit Services has instead expanded service in areas with “big needs,” including the agriculture campus, Sorority Village and Fort Sanders.
To ride the T-Access bus, students must be certified with the Office of Disability Services. Faculty and staff must be certified with the Office of Equity and Diversity to utilize the system. Although only certified persons may ride the T-Access, any student, faculty or staff member is welcome to ride The T or the T-Link, which operates seven days a week from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. These vehicles, as well as The T buses, are fully handicap accessible.
“It basically replicates the same type of service,” Hairr said, “you just don’t have to have certification to ride.”
Because the T-Access runs on a “first come, first serve daily basis,” Hairr said it is common for handicapped students to ride The T during the day, as it is generally a quicker service.
However, Lindsay Lee, a senior in math and Spanish and founder of Campus Disability Advocates, begs to differ.
Attempting to return home from the Hill on a rainy day, Lee said she was denied a lift from The T bus because of her wheelchair. The driver, she said, instructed her to call the T-Access bus.
“As far as I know, it’s illegal for a driver to refuse to let me on the bus, but I had two separate drivers refuse to let me on two separate occasions,” Lee said. “But that day on the Hill in the rain I tried calling the Access Bus and ended up waiting 45 minutes in the rain for it to come, when it could have taken me 20 minutes to get back to Morrill on my own.”
When asked if devising set schedules for students certified through the Office of Disability Services has ever been considered, Hairr replied his office did consider this approach a viable option. Students have expressed changing needs, he said, and seem satisfied overall with the current system.
Lee, however, said she now prefers to avoid that system completely.
“I always scoot now,” said Lee. “I’m faster by myself, and I don’t have to hand over control of my transportation to someone else when I go by myself. It’s a lot less hassle.”
