It May Be Inefficient, But Senior Dial-A-Riders Love Its Mobility

Bag by bag, box by box, an elderly Pomona woman attempted to use Dial-A-Ride vans to move from her apartment. The process took days. Finally, when she asked to take her dresser on board, a driver said no more.

In Pasadena, a disturbed woman, desperate for affection, held a knife to her Dial-A-Ride driver’s neck and asked for a kiss. She didn’t get it. But she did receive a visit from the police.

Then there was the case of a Dial-A-Ride driver who wondered why one of his faithful Pasadena riders was not waiting in front of his house two days in a row. On the third day, the driver went to the man’s door, discovered it open and investigated to find him bedridden and in need of emergency medical care.

Normally, the world of Dial-A-Ride in the San Gabriel Valley is not so dramatic or unusual. It tends to fall into the everyday realm of ferrying people to the grocery store, the doctor’s office, work. Small children sometimes take Dial-A-Ride buses to school.

“Dial-A-Ride is not so much a transit service as it is a public service,” said George L. Sparks, administrator of the Pomona Valley Transportation Authority, which oversees Dial-A-Ride services for Pomona, Claremont, San Dimas and La Verne. “We carry people who don’t have a choice.”

In the last two decades, Dial-A-Ride programs, usually operated by individual communities and financed since 1982 with money generated by a half-cent sales tax, have blossomed in Los Angeles County and the San Gabriel Valley. Nearly all cities in the region, except for the smallest ones, offer some version of it.

As its name implies, Dial-A-Ride essentially is a public taxi service that relies on a fleet of wheelchair-accessible vans, mini-buses and, in a few communities, cabs. The principal users are people over 60 years of age or those with disabilities, and some cities limit ridership to those groups. But cities such as Claremont, La Verne, Pomona, San Dimas, Arcadia, Monrovia and Baldwin Park offer curb-to-curb service to anyone willing to pay a minimal fee, less than the $1.10 it usually takes to ride a regular bus.

“Dial-A-Ride is not an efficient way to get around,” Sparks said, “but if it’s the only way you have, then it’s great.”

By and large, most of the tens of thousands of riders journey uneventfully.

With 42 vehicles and one of Los Angeles County’s largest Dial-A-Ride programs, the Pomona Valley Transportation Authority in its four cities expects to log more than 300,000 trips this year. Pasadena, which also serves San Marino and nearby unincorporated county areas, records 10,500 rides a month.

Whether riders think Dial-A-Ride is the greatest service in the world or whether they consider it a perennially tardy necessity, a relationship develops.

La Verne’s Ethel Kelly loves it. One cool morning, purse in hand and hair freshly curled, she waited patiently outside her home on a suburban cul-de-sac of new houses with terra-cotta roofs.

She was on her way to lunch at a church in San Dimas a few miles away. She lives with relatives but has no car of her own. So Dial-A-Ride, which for the elderly in La Verne goes by the name of Get About, is her salvation.

“I’ve got a big family but I want to be independent,” she said, adding that, even at age 82, she doesn’t want to rely too much on relatives for rides.

“You can’t beat this,” she said as she settled into one of the van’s blue, plastic seats and fastened her seat belt around her. “I hope they never take this away.”

After driver George Linton dropped Kelly off, he cruised toward the Sunnyside Mature Adult Apartments in San Dimas.

“You become their friends, their doctor, their psychologist,” said Linton, a 54-year-old retired long-distance truck driver. “They let you know all their aches and pains.”

As he arrived, a white-haired woman pointed at her watch and, for emphasis, pushed it up toward Linton’s window. “You’re 25 minutes late.”

The woman had been about to drive three of her friends to a meal at the same church where Ethel Kelly was lunching.

The three friends trundled out of the woman’s brown sedan at the sight of the white mini-van. “Thank you kindly, ma’am,” Linton said to one of them as they boarded.

“We about gave up on you,” one of the women said to Linton.

Actually, Linton was not as late as the women thought. Sparks of Pomona Valley Transportation said studies show people think they wait two to three times longer than they really do.

Recently, Pasadena even employed a passenger to conduct a survey by riding day-in, day-out. Of 120 trips in a three-week period, he had complaints about only seven, citing lateness as the main problem. “On a system this big,” said Pasadena’s Dial-A-Ride administrator, Doug Reilly, “we’re never going to be perfect.”

Reilly oversaw a 1988 study by the United Way’s San Gabriel Valley region that concluded “it is time for Dial-A-Ride programs to evolve from just a single-city approach to a more sophisticated regional approach that involves several jurisdictions.”

Some cities, such as those in the Pomona Valley, have banded together. In the process, they have received monetary bonuses from the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission. Baldwin Park joined its larger neighbor, West Covina, to form the Westpark Dial-A-Ride, which now also serves nearby unincorporated areas of the county.

Because Dial-A-Ride funds are based on population, San Marino, with its 13,950 residents, never built up enough money to launch a program until this year, when it linked up with Pasadena’s existing program, said Keith Till, San Marino’s administrative services officer.

However, for the smallest communities, launching Dial-A-Ride programs is virtually out of the question because they never accumulate enough local transit money, known as Proposition A funds.

Dolly Vollaire, city manager of 900-resident Bradbury, said that’s not a big problem. “If someone desperately needs something, like a prescription, they can call us at City Hall and we’ll go get it for them. That’s just the way we are,” she said. “But it would be nice to have the program.”

However, small towns without Dial-A-Ride still can make some money by selling off their unused Proposition A funds to other cities that want to build transit programs. For example, last year Bradbury, after accumulating several years worth of Proposition A money, sold $27,000 worth to Bell Gardens at 52.5 cents on the dollar.

But where money is concerned, the big beneficiary is the rider, whose trips are heavily subsidized. In the county as a whole, where 5- to 6-million Dial-A-Ride trips are taken annually, the actual average cost for a single passenger’s ride is about $8, said Richard DeRock, senior transportation analyst of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission.

With the subsidies, riders pay fares ranging from free to $1.

Price isn’t the only difference among various cities’ Dial-A-Rides. Many tailor their service to local needs and preferences.

Pasadena, for example, offers rides 365 days a year and runs a schedule longer than most, starting at 7 a.m. and ending at 11 p.m. Pasadena even has formed a users’ group that meets monthly to talk about its likes and dislikes.

To help people beat Rose Parade traffic, Pasadena is offering rides to the parade route on New Year’s Day beginning at 6 a.m.

And to encourage ridership and hometown Christmas shopping, Temple City waived its 50-cent fare and let everyone ride for free in December.

Most Dial-A-Ride officials say cities use the service primarily as a convenience to residents. The idea is mobility, not combatting traffic congestion or smog, De Rock said.

Yet Till, of San Marino, said his community offers Dial-A-Ride partly because it wants to help solve air pollution and transportation problems.

“Granted, it’s a small gesture,” Till said, “but when (smog control officials) are starting to look at banning back-yard barbecues . . . then every little bit helps.”

DIAL-A-RIDE IN THE SAN GABRIEL VALLEY

Who can ride Fare Information Alhambra Elderly, disabled $2 for 10 rides 818-289-RIDE Altadena Elderly, disabled 50 cents 818-794-0992 Arcadia All residents 25 to 75 cents 818-445-2211 Azusa Elderly, disabled 50 cents 818-969-7176 Ext. 19 Baldwin Park All residents 35 cents to $1 818-962-1034 Elderly, disabled 818-962-3843 Bradbury No Service Claremont All residents 50 cents 714-620-9820 or 622-8686 Elderly, disabled 50 cents 714-593-7511 Covina Elderly, disabled Free to 50 cents 818-966-9001 Diamond Bar No Service Duarte No Service El Monte Elderly, disabled 50 cents 818-579-5569 Glendora Elderly, disabled 50 cents 818-914-8233 Industry No Service Irwindale No Service La Puente Residents 55 50 cents or and older $3 a month 818-330-4511 La Verne All residents 50 cents to $1 714-620-9820 or 622-8686 Elderly, disabled 50 cents 714-593-7511 Monrovia All residents 50 to 75 cents 818-358-3538 Monterey Park Elderly, disabled Free 818-307-1396 Pasadena Elderly, disabled 50 cents 818-405-4094 Pomona All residents 50 cents 714-620-9820 or 622-8686 Elderly, disabled 50 cents 714-593-7511 Rosemead Elderly, disabled 50 cents 818-572-4099 San Dimas All residents 50 cents 714-622-4435 Elderly, disabled 50 cents 714-593-7511 San Gabriel Elderly, disabled 50 cents 818-308-2875 San Marino Elderly, disabled 50 cents 818-405-4094 Sierra Madre All residents 25 to 50 cents 818-355-7135 or 358-7163 South El Monte Elderly, disabled Free 818-579-6540 Ext. 264 South Pasadena Elderly, disabled Free 818-441-1007 Temple City Elderly, disabled 50 cents 818-286-2456 Walnut No Service West Covina Elderly, disabled 35 cents 818-915-4933