Like other jurisdictions with declining revenue, Arlington County officials are scrambling to make up for a $100 million budget shortfall. But instead of shelving an unnecessary HOT lane lawsuit or axing a multimillion-dollar trolley down Columbia Pike, they’re sticking it to the blind, disabled and elderly.
Since June, Arlington spent $288,884 in legal fees to block the expansion of high-occupancy toll lanes on Interstate 95 and 395, one of the few capacity-increasing, congestion-relieving projects in Northern Virginia for the foreseeable future. Board Chairwoman Barbara Favola defended spending $405 per hour on lawyers, telling the Sun Gazette that “the board knew when it filed the suit that it would be expensive.”
Arlington officials refuse to divulge how much cash has been set aside for this totally unnecessary litigation.
In the meantime, they’re making life miserable for disabled residents who rely on the county’s STAR paratransit service.
RoseAnn Ashby, a policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Education who is legally blind, complained to the County Board last Saturday about the “unprecedented manner” in which significant, life-altering changes were made to the STAR program without consulting, or even informing, those who rely on it daily for essential trips.
Under STAR, 1,200 qualified residents must call a dispatcher 24 hours before their trip to reserve a van or taxicab ride to wherever they want to go. The county-subsidized fare runs from $2.50 for rides within Arlington to $7 for destinations outside the Beltway.
STAR riders were previously picked up and dropped off by vehicles operated by Diamond Transportation Services and Red Top Cab when it was convenient for them. They were charged a small co-payment to allow the driver to wait up to 10 minutes for short trips to the bank, dry cleaners, post office, etc.
All that’s changed. “Now a disabled person must plan for a minimum of 90 minutes between scheduled trips,” Ashby told board members. The only exceptions allowed are a stop at the pharmacy directly after a doctor’s visit or to pick up a child at day care. Errands that used to take her 10 minutes now consume more than an hour and a half.
Besides the waste of time, the new rules pose a safety hazard to disabled people who are afraid of being stranded in public places and often decide not to venture out, as a 20 percent drop in STAR ridership indicates. Billie Jean Keith, a blind retired federal employee who lives on busy Arlington Boulevard, actually fainted on the sidewalk last summer waiting for a STAR ride home.
“There are hundreds of Red Top cabs in Arlington that could come anytime,” Keith told me. “I’m not going to go window shopping for 90 minutes. It seems like they’re trying to make sure the disabled don’t use the program.”
“We’re not prima donnas. This is our lifeline,” added Joe DePhillips, another blind federal employee who lives in Rosslyn. “We’re just asking them to be flexible. We can change our pickup time to later in the day, but not earlier. That doesn’t make sense, especially since there’s no additional cost to the county.”
Meaning it’s not about money, it’s about control.
A county that is literally spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to prevent people who don’t live in Arlington from having access to HOT lanes and is planning to gobble up an entire traffic lane on Columbia Pike for a multimillion-dollar trolley clearly has issues with mobility. Restricting the freedom of disabled residents to live their lives as they see fit is not an anomaly, therefore, but a disturbing example of the new Arlington Way.
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.
