Darian Fleming rolls her walker onto the wheelchair lift of the TriMet LIFT bus. The driver cinches a strap behind her to protect her from falling off the ramp. With the push of a button, the lift slowly rises, carrying Fleming and her walker.
Darian Fleming waits for her TriMet LIFT vehicle to arrive outside of the Fifth Avenue Building in downtown Portland. Fleming has cerebral palsy and is visually impaired.
Fleming, 61, is a self-employed therapist who lives in Gresham. She cannot drive nor take the bus or MAX on her own because she has cerebral palsy and an impaired vision.
She’s one of more than 8,500 people in greater Portland eligible for TriMet’s LIFT rides.
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 requires public transit agencies to provide service for people with disabilities who live within three-quarters of a mile of a bus stop or train station. LIFT is TriMet’s paratransit program.
The regional transportation plan is updated every four years to keep up with changing demographics and new developments in state and federal regulations. An update is underway for 2018. Learn more.
Regional leaders also aspire to provide universal access to safe and reliable transportation, as outlined in Metro’s 2014 Regional Transportation Plan.
Fleming relishes traveling on her own, with help from TriMet. She estimates that she takes about 10 one-way LIFT rides a week.
“I can come and go when I want, not when one of my friends or family feels like driving me or has time,” Fleming said while on her way home from a job training in downtown. “It means that I don’t stay home and isolate. I’m happy when I can be social and work.”
A growing need
Fleming is fortunate enough to have a network of family and friends, but that’s not the case for some people.
“There are a lot of people… who have literally no one they can call at all to give them a ride,” said Mary Graham, a development specialist at Ride Connection, a nonprofit that provides transportation services. “You don’t realize it’s happening, but it is in this city that is so big and has so many transit options.”
Ride Connection, which has partnered with TriMet for nearly three decades, complements TriMet’s LIFT program. Paratransit is strictly offered to people with disabilities. Age is not a factor.
Oregonians are aging faster than the national average. Recent Census data shows that the state’s 65 and over population grew 18 percent between 2010 and 2014, compared to just 14.2 percent for the rest of the country.
The region will face a growing need to provide Baby Boomers with transit service outside of the existing bus and rail network as this generation reaches retirement age.
Paratransit cannot meet this demand, so organizations like Ride Connection are picking up the slack.
Ride Connection offers free door-to-door rides to anyone over the age of 60 or with a disability, as well as people with low incomes. It also runs free buses in smaller communities around the region to serve people with limited transportation options in the Portland tri-county area.
In Forest Grove, for example, its GroveLink bus makes a loop through town each hour, linking residents to a TriMet bus line in downtown Forest Grove.
GroveLink pulls over at a bus stop near Pacific University in Forest Grove. Ride Connection, a nonprofit that operates GroveLink, provides transportation to older adults and disabled residents across the Portland region.
“Some people have lost their license or made the decision to stop driving,” said Sarah Morrill, Ride Connection’s lead counselor for travel options. “Some folks maybe relied on a family member and they’re moving away. They’re limited in their resources.”
Ride Connection has seen a 28 percent increase in rides from 2014 to 2016. Several factors may have driven that increase. Ride Connection has looser eligibility requirements than LIFT does, and all of their services are free for users.
“I think people would just quit riding, some of them, if it was going to cost them $9 a day instead of $5 a day to use transit,” said Cora Potter, the grants and outreach manager at Ride Connection.
“They’re already probably paying for a TriMet trip once they get into town, so adding another cost on top of that, it didn’t really make any sense,” she said.
Ride Connection, in coordination with TriMet, also informs people about transportation options beyond its own services through their RideWise program.
“Not everybody needs to take the door-to-door transportation,” Graham said. “Some people just need to be taught how to use the bus and it’s that simple, and once they have a couple training sessions, they’re good to go.”
TriMet has a thorough evaluation process to determine eligibility for its LIFT service, due to strict ADA requirements and limited funding.
TriMet’s Transit Mobility Center in Old Town Chinatown has mock-up setups of ramps, gravel and more to assess people's ability to use its bus and light rail system.
Applicants have to navigate a mock-up setup of ramps, gravel, stoplights, and more at its Transit Mobility Center.
In some cases, these assessments reveal that all people need is to learn how to take the bus and the MAX.
“There’s a good share of people here have never used transit,” said Kathy Miller, who manages LIFT’s eligibility and community relations. “They’ve driven all their life. Now they can’t drive. For people that have never been on the transit system before, it’s a big deal.”
As real estate becomes more expensive around Portland’s central core, more people who use TriMet’s LIFT service are moving farther away from downtown.
Who’s eligible for paratransit service?
According to the ADA, people need to meet the following three conditions to be eligible for paratransit service:
–Inability to ride transit independently due to a disability or disabling health condition.
–Inability to travel on transit without an accessible vehicle.
–Inability to reach the closest transit stop.
All transit agencies, big or small, use these conditions to determine eligibility.
"Our customer base is shifting,” said Margo Moore, director of TriMet’s Accessible Transportation Programs. “They’re moving farther out into the Southwest Corridor, Estacada, Oregon City. Our garages are not located in these [new] areas where we have these high demands.”
And it is costly to run paratransit service. Recent figures show that an individual TriMet LIFT ride costs the agency $35.
“People sometimes talk about unfunded mandates, and I would say paratransit is one of those,” said Eric Hesse, TriMet’s strategic planning coordinator.
He underscores how challenging it is to meet a federal requirement with no federal funding.
“That’s a big issue for the industry as a whole, and folks are trying to grapple with that,” he said.
Planning into the future
Darian Fleming uses the wheelchair lift to get off the TriMet LIFT vehicle at her home in Gresham.
For TriMet, Ride Connection and other transit agencies, the future will continue to be about getting more people to use buses and trains.
That not only helps the region work toward reducing its carbon footprint, but it also helps these existing door-to-door services work better.
Fleming said TriMet’s LIFT service isn’t perfect, but she’s grateful for it. “It’s just an excellent service if you want to keep having a life,” she said.
TriMet officials plan to look into keeping more LIFT vehicles available in the suburban communities where many of their users live. Doing so will save the agency money and improve service.
The agency hopes to launch a pilot program with a ridesharing company to carry LIFT passengers in the coming years to better respond to same-day or real-time requests.
It’s also studying emerging technologies that could improve same-day requests for rides.
These initiatives may still be a ways away, but it’s all part of ensuring safe and reliable transportation choices for everyone who lives in greater Portland.
Learn more
The regional transportation plan is updated every four years to keep up with changing demographics and new developments in state and federal regulations. An update is underway for 2018. Learn more.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the Americans with Disabilities Act requires transit agencies to provide free service to people with disabilities who live within three-quarters of a mile of a transit stop. The ADA requires that agencies provide such service, but it does not have to be free. This story has been corrected.