Send to: TTC Chair Jamaal Myers ([email protected]), Mayor Olivia Chow ([email protected]), and your own local Councillor (find their email here).
Please CC: [email protected].
Email subject: Invest in protecting Wheel-Trans service
Dear TTC Chair Jamaal Myers, Mayor Olivia Chow, and [local Councillor if applicable to your organization],
I am writing on behalf of [ORGANIZATION NAME] to express our grave concern about the TTC’s “Family of Services” (FOS) model, and encourage you to invest in protecting door-to-door Wheel-Trans access.
Wheel-Trans users need choice and safety. The spirit of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act is to expand access, not restrict it. Yet the TTC plans to screen out 50% of current Wheel-Trans users from door-to-door service, what they have termed a “diversion target.”
The estimated cost of maintaining door-to-door service for all Wheel-Trans users in 2025 is $5.3 million. We urge you to fully fund the cost of maintaining this critical service, and to vote against making the “Family of Services” mandatory. Using the conventional TTC must be a choice for people with disabilities.
Forcing seniors and people with disabilities to use the conventional TTC to cut costs would be a shameful policy choice that will result in the following impacts:
- Getting stranded at bus stops: Instead of a single, door-to-door trip, the “Family of Services” involves multiple transfers. Conventional TTC might be accessible on paper, but in reality, TTC buses can be too crowded to board. FOS trips can also involve Wheel-Trans pick-ups at TTC stops halfway through a trip: People get stranded when their connecting TTC bus trip is more than 5 minutes late, the grace period that a Wheel-Trans vehicle will wait.
- Isolation: Being forced to use conventional streetcars, subways, and buses will discourage people from using transit, resulting in isolation and a loss of independence.
- More expensive transit trips: Because “Family of Services” trips involve multiple transfers between Wheel-Trans vehicles, buses, streetcars, and subways,, Wheel-Trans users have reported that some trips take longer than the 2-hour transfer window, and can cost two fares.
- Unsafe transit trips: People with chronic health conditions and disabilities are concerned about the risk of being pushed or jostled on crowded subway platforms and slipping or falling while boarding crowded buses.
Wheel-Trans users do not support this policy. Public consultations held in April 2024 found that:
- 39% of Wheel-Trans users said they would never use the Family of Services.
- 61% of Wheel-Trans users felt that the TTC did not meet their accessibility requirements.
- 60% of Wheel-Trans users feel that crowding is an issue that affects people with disabilities.
The TTC is not fully accessible and will not be up to AODA standards by 2025. This is another obvious reason why the “Family of Services” model should not be implemented and or made mandatory for riders who are classified as receiving “conditional” Wheel-Trans eligibility.
Many “Conditional” Wheel-Trans users who would lose door-to-door service if Family of Services becomes mandatory have the condition that they are eligible for Wheel-Trans door-to-door trips only in the peak periods. But every hour on the TTC is rush hour, because the 2023 TTC Operating Budget changed the crowding standard from the TTC’s official Service Standards. Service in the off-peak is currently planned for "standing room only,” and people who use wheelchairs have reported that conventional buses are sometimes too crowded to get on.
Financial and other barriers prevent Wheel-Trans users from appealing their “Conditional” status: Gathering supporting documentation for the appeal requires booking appointments with specialists, paying for a doctor's note, and paying for attendant support.
We urge you to fully fund the cost of maintaining this critical service, and to vote against making the “Family of Services” mandatory.
Sincerely,
[YOUR NAME / ORGANIZATION NAME]
P.S. To read more, this 2022 article by The Local provides important context and Wheel-Trans user voices: https://thelocal.to/wheel-trans-accessibility-cuts-ttc/