Morning wait for The Ride. Julia takes The Ride to her day center. The Ride is our MTA van transportation for people with disabilities. We are lucky to have something like it. Sometimes lucky; sometimes a curse.
The Ride is safe, the drivers are helpful, the interface be it on computer or the phone are relatively effective. The flaw in the scheme is reliability. The Ride is notoriously unreliable. So much so that Julia new day center does not allow clients to use The Ride to and from the center.
And I understand.
The Ride comes early, the Ride comes late, and sometimes it doesn’t come at all. A few times, The Ride has come to the wrong address and left, blaming Julia for not being available. Occasionally, they have used Lyft to pick Julia up from her day center and the Lyft driver has no idea that Julia will not be waiting outside for the Lyft car.
Using The Ride for the past 15 months, I’ve come to understand how and when to communicate with the dispatchers. If I find out that a Lyft vehicle will be used, I call and ask that the driver be given specific instructions. No one likes doing this. When The Ride fails to show up and I call the dispatcher for an immediate re-schedule, I refuse to be transferred to a department where I can lodge a complaint. I don’t want to complain, I want the ride.
Chasing Joy 