B.S. 101

BC Liberals came up with a new slogan a few years back.
“Build the best system of support in Canada for persons with disabilities, those with special needs, children at risk, and seniors.”
So how does being traped in your home meet a disabled persons needs?
If your a person who is classed as PWD with welfare, then go request a form called the "Special Transportation Subsidy" it will allow you funds to hire a taxi, or any other type of transportation you can arrange, good luck.
For all the seniors that have voted Liberals all this time, welcome to hell, and enjoy what a lot of us have had to deal with in the past 8 years....

missed piece

Most reporting on this issue seem to miss that for thirty years handy dart was run very successfully by a cooperative and not one single strike. The question is why did translink/bc liberals sell it off to an American firm instead of leaving it with a cooperative with a proven track record?

Handydart Strike making customers sick

I have been a HandyDart user for two years and I am just one of the thousands of hostages and victims who are currently suffering from the effects of this lengthy dispute.

Prior to MVT taking over, the service was excellent. I could count on being picked up within my ½ hour pick up window and that allowed me to take a part-time clerical job. It made all the difference in the world to me to be able to work again, to get out of my solitary existence as a disabled person and make a contribution to the world. But from the very beginning of MVT taking over HandyDart the company attitude has been one of arrogance, indifference and greed. Being a "for-profit" outfit from the States they do not look upon HandyDart as a service but as a business.
I don't think you gave adequate consideration to cultural differences when you awarded MVT the contract to run HandyDart. In the USA, profit is the primary and approved motive for every venture; while the well-being of individuals is of lesser or very little concern. In Canada, for generations, it is the well-being of customers and staff that is of primary importance. The Donald Trumps, so idolized in US for their cut-throat business deals and who possess a "profit above all" mentality are reprehensible to Canadians and the longer the strike goes on, the worse PR Translink and MVT is getting - because it proves that profit is your primary motive, not service. While we recognize that profit is essential to business Canadians place a high value on ethical business practices. Unfortunately, with the advent of MVT HandyDart has become everything ugly and repugnant about the US and its ingrained “Religion of Profit.”

What bothers me most is the company's willingness to allow the strike to go on indefinitely, causing not merely inconvenience, but suffering to its customers. The company does not appear to have any concern whatever about the sick or frail people who because of the strike, have to spend $44 taxi fare one way to visit their doctors. When our allottment of Taxi savers is gone we riders cannot then get medical care, groceries, etc. We have been deprived of a basic human right - the right to freedom of movement - and we now are isolated and alone - and for long periods of time. This is depressing and debilitating.

If you, the Board of Translink, truly cared about your customers you would take the proper steps to end this strike by insisting on binding arbitration. MVT has implied that they do not trust Canadian arbitrators, which is disrespectful to those so employed, and Translink, by not insisting that MVT accept binding arbitration is complicit in this war on disabled, elderly and frail people by enabling MVT to deprive them of their necessary transportation. Shame on you!

While the union has shown concern for customers by changing their position in a bid to get buses rolling again, the company continues to prolong the strike.

gordo

good old gordo taking care of his rich and corporate friends at the expense of those who need help the most, like a true bully acting out in a very cowardly way and lets not forget falcon, isn't he some kind of born again Christian? So much for acting Christ like!

Remember all those nice tax breaks gordo gave to his rich sponsors well now you know who is paying for them. Why give the contract to Canadians and keep the money here when you can give it to a foreign company to screw Canadians over, just remember that when you go xmas shopping and avoid stores who support these people.

I refuse to shop in a store that is a c.f.i.b. member or belongs to any of the chambers, just look for the stickers in the storefront or on the door, they don't deserve my hard earned money, I will go to Costco first and I used to only shop local, not any longer.

campbells christmas card...

he`ll print these posts and send them off to his fellow neocon reptiles like the fraser institute where it`ll be high fives and god bless us all and screw all the peasants who don`t have enough money and connections for us to care.maybe they`ll have mla kevin krueger say a chistmas prayer like he did in the legislature for those poor misguided hospital employees that did not see the wisdom of privatisation.Don`t exprct anything from these thugs or the bullies they hire, recently on voice of bc one of campbells many callous smarmy apologists vaughn palmer asked head of translink , an american ceo of course, about funding and this fellow prendegast just huffed and puffed about new and exiting ways of collecting more money from bridge tolls and pay highways and he was just gushing with excitement about how happy people would be to pay pay pay extra just to get home to their family,he even used single moms as a example of people so stressed by time constraints that they would just pay more and pay more ..well you know, it`s all just money money money

correction...

At the time of the HEU strike Krueger referred to HEU members as"toilet cleaners". you get the drift of how these liberals feel about those beneeth them.

people used to come first

I was a HandyDart driver for one year, prior to the takeover by MVT. The Pacific Transit Cooperative that ran the Vancouver service was a caring organization run by the people it served. It was focused on the "end user" as the politicians like to say. It was efficient and very adaptable to changes in schedule by the customers. I met many wonderful passengers, including Candice Larscheid, Jeannette Parrish and many others, and there was a real feeling that this was a job worth doing, a job which made a difference to people. I learned that "disability" is only a word and a pejorative word at that; and I realized that Vancouver is or was one of the best places to live for people who had mobility issues. HandyDart was one of the reasons. I'm saddened by what has happened to the service and to the customers, and to the many fine people working for HandyDart, in particular the drivers I used to work alongside. They are fully committed, caring women and men who want to provide door to door service without being rushed by unrealistic schedules, who want to be treated by the system as TRANSIT OPERATORS, which is what they are. They deserve wages commensurate with (at the very least) those who drive the community shuttles. And pensions. Instead, they are being treated as if they're delivering packages (or worse), and it's a damn shame. Translink can force a settlement because, as one letter writer noted, there is a performance clause to the contract, and MVT is not living up to it. Except for saving money.

Raging Mobs Of Riders!

I never pictured a group like the riders storming an office, but it's great.

Imagine if the disabled and elderly staged a protest during the Olympics, who would touch them? No cop wants his picture in the media hauling Grandma, or a disabled person off to jail.

All that new riot equipment would be paralyzed! Oh, it would be priceless! Someone in Vancouver has to organized this.

This is about human beings

Larscheid is right. This is all about human beings, and the rights we're entitled to. Freedom of movement? Entitled. Freedom to bicker while others are held hostage? Not entitled.

At some point compassion must outweigh contractual concerns. The daily frustrations faced by disabled people in an aggressively able-bodied world - if there were only a way to temporarily disable people just to provide a taste...

How about this: A mobile work of art approach:
http://blogs.sfu.ca/departments/7fm/?p=142

Boycott

Yes a boycott during the Olympics from the Disabled and Seniors for things like transportation and a little other thing called food.
I've never in my life heard of the Disabled potesting anything. I hope this is just the start!!!!!!!!!!! of something wonderful!!!!!!!!!!

Agreed

I can only hope the majority of people boycott the olympics, after all tax payers will have to pay anyway. Many people have and are suffering because gordo sees no value keeping people healthy, happy or functioning at their maximum potential.

It seems to me that we Bc'ers are not to be respected, helped kept healthy or educated etc unless they are rich. If you are poor, a senior, or disabled ignore you.

How many programs for the disabled have been cut? Even basics for the disabled have been made much harder to get even when a doctor swears you need it.

How about the growing number of homeless = that is a disability in its self. Why would anyone caring person allow so many to go hungry or possibly freeze to death.
Welcome to BC and pray you never become disabled.

gordo must be so proud

gordo must be so proud to have removed the pleasure for peoples lives. Leaving them stranded

HandiDart

This service was initially started as a cooperative, non profit society. I suggest each community form a coopertive, non profit society to provide transport...once again...under a new name. If folks stop having to use the corporate Handi Dart; this American Company can fold in Canada...and vanish. How nice that would be!

We can only hope.

I wonder if people will ever realise that "The Market" exists only to serve itself, and that when it is given preferential treatment by gov'ts like Campbell's, the people's interests can be promoted ONLY through political pressure

well...

it seems like Pacific Transit Coop wasn't such a dream after all, they went bankrupt and had to be bailed out by the Transit Authority. They let their costs get out of hand. The ATU is striking for money when they can hold Christmas and Olympic transit hostage which makes them appear opportunistic and Translink appears to be an expensive conglomerate of high brows incapable obviously of running something as complex as a bus system. Good on the users to show some numbers and passion, but who is responsible for the decision to manage the bidding process?
They should swarm their office, maybe the mayor's office. It seems the problem isn't the coop, ATU and translink but the clowns that would let these clowns run the system without some guidance. Maybe a contract with MVT will give these entities some time to coalesce and come back with a working proposal, it was obviously a goat show all around.
My heart goes out to the people that are now house-bound because of greed, ignorance and excessive bureaucracy. Which office makes the decisions to merge all these misfits?
Don't look to Translink for answers, you have lots of education but no brains there apparently. Disband them if they are that useless.
Maybe the problem lies in the fact that it is time to de-balkanize the region.

Just Tired

I stopped using Handydart last year when I found that I could not depend on being picked up at the stated time, either at my home or for my return trip.

When I complained, I was not listened to or I was told that the driver came but I was not there. When I told them that I was there, out at the pickup point before the stated time. I was told that I was lying.

This got so bad that I got a pay as you go cell phone so I could at least call a cab when I was stranded.

I now do not go for all my treatments, meet friends, go to the symphony, attend meetings, had to resign from a community board, stopped a group I was leading, do not go to any stores that are beyond the range of my powerchair.

My life has been constrained to my apartment and my neighbourhood. With winter coming my world will become smaller and I will have to rely on neighbours for basic necessities.

I use my taxi savers, but with the increased demand for them wait times are common. Also you can not prebook a cab to pick you up a certain time. So for Dr. appointments etc I find I have to call for a pickup 1 hour before the appointment and hope that when I finish I will not have a long wait to go home.

I would like those executives of handy Dart and government to spend a month in a wheelchair and attempt to have a good life dealing with no transportation. To have to rely on the kindness of strangers for basic needs.

My one caveat is they have to do it on our income level not theirs.