DETROIT — A representative from the Michigan Department of Justice spent this afternoon in Detroit, listening to and documenting personal testimonies from Detroiters about the "unnecessary paratransit crisis."
Up until this month 70% of Detroit's paratransit services were provided by French based company Transdev, and the Detroiters at Saturdays meeting re-iterated just how bad the program was.
Board Member for Detroit's National Federation of the Blind chapter, Richard Clay, helped lead the meeting and said; "I’ve had it all. I've been picked up late, missed clients, missed doctors appointments. I've been just sitting around with the doctor looking at me like ‘What? Do I got to take you home?'"
Clay says the problems with Detroit's paratransit services have been going on for years.
Those who are blind say they've been dropped off at wrong locations and those in wheelchairs say at times they haven't been properly strapped in and have fallen in the buses.
One woman at the meeting said, "I actually feared riding paratransit because I was dropped off at the wrong place and the driver drove off."
According to Clay, all of 2022 the blind community believed when Transdev's contract was up this winter, the city would not renew them, they would go with a new provider.
However this November they learned that Transdev was up for a new 5 year, $49 million contract.
Clay says him and other riders went to city council to tell them this new contract could not happen; "City council heard us, they tried to help us negotiate changes in the contract, a shorter contract, or a contract without transdev period. The mayor and his directors, they just resisted."
Clay says at the end of November city council voted down the new Transdev contract, but the disaster doesn't stop there.
About 1,000 local riders with disabilities rely on paratransit a day, by getting rid of Transdev that left about 700 Detroiters with disabilities without a ride to doctors appointments and more.
To leave them in a lurch like this, is against federal law.
In December Mayor Mike Duggan put out an emergency contract that would continue paratransit services through four temporary new contracts with four new providers before the gap in service began.
However many people at Saturday's meeting said they don't see him as the hero.
Stephen Handschu siad, "What he failed to tell the city is that he created this crisis."
"Some of us don’t see with our eyes, but we see very clearly what’s going on," said Clay.
Those who use paratransit say this whole situation has been a mess.
Saturday was all about making sure the Department of Justice heard and documented what you just learned so when Mayor Duggan's emergency contract is up in six months, this doesn't happen again.
"A lot of the solutions people have not really been listening to us," said Clay. "So we hope that they will listen to us, take into account what we have to say, the riders and users of the service."
