Wait is over for cabs accessible to wheelchairs

THE PHILADELPHIA Parking Authority rolled out the first in a fleet of 150 new wheelchair-accessible taxi vans yesterday morning.

For those who use wheelchairs, the development was worth the two-hour wait they'd usually endure to hail an accessible cab, said Leah Smith, a volunteer with Taxis For All Philadelphia, which advocates for wheelchair-accessible taxis.

The new taxi was introduced at a news conference called yesterday by Taxis For All Philadelphia and the PPA at the PPA's Taxicab and Limo Division in Southwest Philadelphia. It will be equipped with a nonmechanical ramp and a floor that can be lowered to give wheelchair passengers extra headroom, said Jim Ney, director of the Taxicab and Limo Division.

Out of the city's 1,599 taxicabs, only seven - now eight - are wheelchair accessible vehicles.

"If a person in a wheelchair needs an accessible taxi, it's not just a matter of standing on the side of the road and hailing a cab," Smith said. "Who has time to wait two hours for a taxi?"

With the addition of 61 WAV taxicab vans come fall, Taxis For All Philadelphia volunteer Matthew Clark said wheelchair users will finally be closer to having equal transportation access. He credits a 2011 lawsuit alleging the PPA wasn't following the Americans With Disabilities Act, and other advocacy work in the past several years for the changes.

Last year, the city had 45 wheelchair accessible medallions up for sale, setting the starting bid for taxicab companies at $450,000. By this year, the cab companies weren't biting, so the PPA lowered the bid to $50,000. "We said whatever, let the market set the price," Ney said.

The company that bought the medallions was 215-GET-A-CAB, formerly All City and Checker Cabs, pitting it alongside Freedom Taxi, the only other cab company in the city with WAV taxicabs.

PPA plans to add 15 new WAV taxicabs each year, eventually totaling 150 by 2020, Ney said.

But if a new PPA regulation passes, things could get costly for cab companies, which would be required to be wheelchair accessible. Each brand-new wheelchair- accessible taxicab costs companies $30,000. The regulation also would require every newly licensed taxicab to have fewer than than 500 miles on it, a measure Ney said the city's outdated taxicab system needs.

The newest regulations "will play a part in making the service safer and sturdier," he said.