Torrance to Make Buses Wheelchair-Accessible

Torrance is buying new buses and fixing up old ones in an effort to make the entire 40-bus Torrance Transit fleet wheelchair-accessible within a year.

Funds for the buses will come from state and federal grants and the county’s transportation sales tax. The new ones will cost $1.3 million; a figure for retrofitting the old ones was not available.

This week, the City Council voted unanimously to purchase eight new 40-foot-long buses to replace old buses that lack wheelchair lifts. In addition, the city has been retrofitting 16 buses whose lifts do not work.

Approval of the bus purchases came more than a month after a group of wheelchair users demanded that Torrance officials make the entire city bus system accessible to the disabled.

The group, known as American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, accused Torrance Transit of violating a state law that requires transit systems to be accessible to the handicapped.

The group, displaying banners and posters, demonstrated at a shopping mall and a bus yard before voicing their complaints at the City Council’s April 12 meeting.

Transit Manager Ray Schmidt said in an interview Wednesday that the purchase of the new buses had been discussed before the demonstration and was not a reaction to the protest. The buses were bought to replace older models, some of which are more than 20 years old, Schmidt said.

The retrofitting of the 16 buses already in the fleet is necessary because lift parts have been difficult to find since the manufacturer went out of business years ago.

Once the new buses are in operation and the retrofitting is completed, all 40 of the city’s buses will be wheelchair-accessible, he said.

“We have always been emphatically for handicapped accessibility,” Schmidt said. “The City Council is very, very adamant about doing their best to take care of the handicapped community.”

The council action did not satisfy Olga Thorington a 29-year resident of Torrance and past president of the South Bay chapter of California Assn. of the Physically Handicapped.

Delay Foreseen

The 71-year-old wheelchair user, who participated in the demonstration, called the bus purchase “very nice,” but complained that “those buses probably won’t be on their routes for another year.”

Thorington said she often finds that lifts on the buses do not operate correctly or are accessible only for a certain type of wheelchair. She also complained that many times the bus drivers do not know how to operate the lifts.

Diane Coleman, an organizer of the group who also participated in the demonstration, said: “I am very encouraged by their reaction.”

But Coleman, a wheelchair user who works as an attorney for the state, also said the city needs to train bus drivers to operate the lifts.

Schmidt said that every bus driver is trained to operate the lifts and is supposed to make sure the lift is operating correctly before leaving the bus yard.

As for handling various types of wheelchairs, City Manager LeRoy Jackson said the lifts meet federal standards. “We are attempting to accommodate as many types of wheelchairs as possible,” he said.