Disabled Children Forced Off Trolley in Dispute Over Fare

San Diego Trolley officials said Wednesday that “poor judgment obviously was used” by an operator who forced eight children--including six physically handicapped preschoolers--and their four adult chaperones off the trolley Tuesday and into the rain at the wrong station.

The operator believed the group had not purchased the proper tickets to ride from the Santa Fe Depot in downtown San Diego to the Harborside station, and ordered them off the trolley instead at the Barrio Logan station in a more industrial part of town, one stop short of their intended destination for lunch.

The group was in fact properly ticketed to ride the trolley all the way to Harborside, said Peter Tereschuck, director of transportation for the San Diego Trolley.

“In terms of good judgment, sound judgment and logical thinking with regards to the occurrence, therein lies the problem,” he said. “Under the circumstances, poor judgment was obviously used in the matter.”

The group got on the next trolley to Harborside after a 15-minute wait, but only after passengers of the second trolley helped them on board after the operator of the second trolley tried to rebuff the group since his trolley’s handicapped lift did not operate.

The incident has raised the ire of San Diego Unified School District officials, who say they are upset by the treatment afforded the students.

The group--a teacher, three adult aides, six physically handicapped children and two other children from the Albert Schweitzer School for disabled children--was on a field trip to experience the trolley system, said Catherine Hopper, assistant superintendent of operations for the school district.

“It upsets me that, if this is all as alleged, the trolley person didn’t very carefully check to see where the tickets would have taken the children,” she said. “Even if the tickets were incorrect, I think in this instance there was merit to letting them get off where they wanted to get off.

“In this city, we don’t throw people off trolleys if they’re physically handicapped, even if an error was made (on their part).”

Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s office said it would conduct its own inquiry into the incident.

The field trip began at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday when the group, checking the information matrix at a ticket machine at the train station, correctly purchased 75-cent tickets to carry them to Harborside, everyone agrees.

As the trolley approached Barrio Logan, the group was told by the trolley operator “that our tickets would only take us to Barrio Logan,” teacher Lisa Bartman said in a letter of complaint to trolley officials.

When the trolley stopped and Bartman and the other adults argued that they had purchased tickets to carry them one stop farther, to Harborside, the operator pushed one of the wheelchair-bound children onto the lift and lowered him to the ground, where he sat in the rain, Bartman said.

At that point, she said, she and the other adults turned their attention to getting the other students safely off the trolley so the group would not be separated, and the trolley pulled away from the station.

“Rather than have all the trolley passengers get mad at us, we decided to get the children and get off,” Bartman said. “(The operator) wasn’t nasty or anything like that. She was nice. It was just poor judgment on her part.”

When the next trolley came along, according to Bartman, the operator said his handicapped lift was broken and “we would have to wait for the next one.” But she said she insisted they be allowed to board the trolley, lift or no lift.

Two trolley passengers helped the group board, and two trolleymen eventually joined in lending assistance, Bartman said.

The group finally arrived at Harborside, had lunch and returned to downtown San Diego by trolley, but not without further problems. They were waiting on the wrong side of the tracks when the first trolley arrived and couldn’t get on when the doors opened only on the other side.

When the next trolley came, Bartman said, “I looked for a lift . . . and I couldn’t find one. The lifts were on the” other side of the trolley car.

“The guy that checks the fare, he didn’t even help us get the children on board. He just stood there. A trolley security guard came to help us up,” Bartman said.

Hopper said she hoped to discuss the matter with trolley officials “to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again.”

Tereschuck said the incident will be reviewed by officials to determine whether disciplinary action should be taken against the unnamed trolley operator who, he said, had several years’ experience with the system.

At least one independent eyewitness to the incident has contacted trolley officials and promised to write his own letter describing what he saw, Tereschuck said.

Discipline aside, trolley officials will consider whether procedural changes should be considered, such as providing operators with, or installing on trolleys the information matrices that now are attached to ticket machines explaining the trolley’s fare system.

“A distance-based zone fare structure is more complicated than the old flat fare because an individual’s fare varies from where he boards and gets off,” Tereschuck said. “The operator mistakenly told the teacher that their tickets were valid only to Barrio Logan.”

Tereschuck acknowledged that it is not even the operator’s job to enforce ticket fares in the first place. That job rests with the system’s 11 fare inspectors, who ride the various trolleys and check about 30% of the system’s passengers on a random basis.

On Tuesday, no fare inspector was on the trolley that the children were riding on, and the operator took the issue into her own hands, he said.

Tereschuck said the incident “was not representative of what we consider to be an otherwise good record on handling passengers with special needs. Most of our operators represent us well. This unfortunate incident occurred and, on the basis of the information we have, it does appear her judgment can be held in question.”

Times staff writer Hector Gutierrez contributed to this story.