Much-needed accessible transportation only serves a handful in San Diego

From the Voice of San Diego:

Her muscles are atrophied but her brain is fine, so 35-year-old LaTasha Jackson (pictured) has no problem enjoying a Padres game or a dinner event in San Diego with her friends who also have cerebral palsy.

It's getting there that's the challenge.

Jackson, who uses a wheelchair, has to ride three separate special equipped vans to reach San Diego from her apartment in Escondido. The trip back requires another series of transfers, and each one requires her to wait for a new van to pick her up.

All together, a round trip that might take about an hour for anyone in a private car could take her six hours in an endless round of getting into a van, traveling for a few miles, getting out of the van, waiting for another van to come pick her up and then starting the cycle again.

It's impossible to attend a night baseball game at Petco Park, and even day games are a nightmare of logistics.

Jackson seems to find joy in the mere act of living, and she smiles when asked about the hassles she endures to be able to travel. But it's clear she doesn't appreciate the delays.

"I don't like to wait a long time," she said after taking two vans to make it to a medical appointment in Poway.

In 2005, a group of local activists set up a government agency to make things easier for disabled people like Jackson to get around. They hoped to unite social service organizations and transportation agencies under one umbrella that would give people a single number to call and get a ride.

In simple terms, the vision was this: No fuss, no hassle, no duplication of services, no nightmare van-to-van-to-van trips.

Four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars later, the little-known Full Access & Coordinated Transportation has only provided direct transportation assistance to a handful of people.

Hobbled by management problems, this blend of government agency and non-profit lacked a business plan and focused on raising money and spending it on management employees instead of helping people get around.

For example, the agency fired its first executive director and hired an interim leader -- who was also a board member -- at an annualized salary of $175,000, much higher than the position's normal pay.

"They didn't serve the public," said Penny Goforth, a La Mesa grant writer who helped the agency raise money until she became disillusioned by its management. "How many people didn’t get to doctor's appointments or stores because they were still planning on getting them transportation?"

Former Coronado City Councilman Phil Monroe, chairman of the agency's board, acknowledged a rocky few years. "We didn’t get off to a really good start. There's no question about that."

But he said the agency is moving ahead under a new executive director who hopes to begin helping disabled county residents get rides by the end of the year.

Others who advocate for transportation in the county are hopeful too. As they wait, though, more money is still being spent, provided courtesy of taxpayers -- both federal and local -- and philanthropists.

Every day, dozens of vans head out to pick up disabled people across the county. Some charge a fee, while others are free. They pick up those in wheelchairs, the infirm elderly, and the developmentally disabled.

Social services agencies and churches run some of the vans, but most are provided by public transit agencies.

The problem: There's no cross-talk between the various transportation providers.

In Oceanside, for example, the city might send vehicles to pick up seniors so they can go to a senior lunch program, said Alane Haynes, accessible services administrator with the North County Transit District. At the same time, the San Diego Center for the Blind may be picking up someone in the same area, as might the transit district's "paratransit" program, which makes about 300 trips a day to help the disabled.

"You have got three different vehicles going to the same vicinity," she said. "Wouldn't it be smarter to have one vehicle so that the two other vehicles can pick up people who don't have transportation (elsewhere)? That's the general idea behind coordination."

A network could also help people like Jackson take a single van to travel across the county; various jurisdictions could work together and figure out a way for her to avoid multiple transfers and simply rely on one provider. And it could bring services to areas that have limited or non-existent bus routes, like rural areas and wealthy suburbs.

If there's no bus route running through a neighborhood, vans operated by transit agencies won't go serve it. Private transportation for the disabled is an option, but an expensive one at $100 a ride, compared to $4 or $4.50 for a transit van.

Enter FACT, created by Haynes and other transportation advocates. In 2006, it began setting up its operations. Led by an appointed board that included local elected officials, including Escondido Mayor Lori Holt Pfeiler, it hired an executive director and began applying for grant money.

Over the last three years, the agency has spent more than $500,000, much of it from federal and local grants -- including $105,017 over the past year from the San Diego Association of Governments.

The agency has created an online database, held numerous meetings with local officials and spent money to raise money by hiring grant writers.

But the agency has failed to meet its goals.

It has not created a transportation network in North County, where it was to launch a pilot project. It has not designed a software system to allow disabled people to easily call a central number and get assistance in finding a ride.

The number of people directly helped by FACT remains in the double digits, acknowledges its executive director, Max Calder.

The agency helped 34 developmentally disabled people find rides in late 2008 and early 2009. But the program was cancelled in February when the state reneged on a grant due to lack of funds.