Elderly Patrons Cite Van Problems : Transportation: Complaints about the dial-a-ride service focus on lengthy waits, long trips and unsafe drives.

Elderly patrons are complaining that cutbacks to a Valley dial-a-ride service are causing them to miss medical appointments, endure long rides that make them physically ill, and wait for vans that never show up.

City Councilwoman Laura Chick and senior advocates are looking into the complaints, which mounted after a new contractor, Medi-Ride, took over the CITYRIDE shuttle service for seniors and the disabled on July 1.

One 83-year-old who relies on CITYRIDE for daily meals at the Valley Storefront in North Hollywood said the vans take so long that she has had to choose between eating at the center or getting medical care.

“It takes two hours to get home and I live three minutes from here,” said Rebecca Zieper, slapping her hand angrily on a table at the Valley Storefront. “I miss all my medical appointments.”

Irwin Rosenberg, vice president of Medi-Ride, said he has not received complaints from seniors. “My problem is, why don’t they call us?” he said. “If there are problems, we want to hear about them.”

John Fong, supervising transportation manager for the city Department of Transportation, which oversees CITYRIDE, said the service is just getting under way and problems are being ironed out.

“You’ve got to give it a chance,” Fong said.

About 16,000 Valley residents with disabilities or 65 and older have registered for the dial-a-ride program since VALTRANS became CITYRIDE on April 1. Patrons buy discounted scrip tickets for the taxis, dial-a-ride shuttles or bus passes.

The city pays Medi-Ride more than $1.5 million annually for the dial-a-ride shuttle service. Van service was cut back, Fong said, after the City Council approved a taxi program that also serves Valley seniors.

To help pay for the taxi service, the number of dial-a-ride vans was reduced from 40 to 24 when Medi-Ride took over July 1, Fong said. The number of daily riders, about 800, has only dropped by about 30.

Many seniors say they do not take the taxis because the rides cost more than a shuttle and are not accessible by wheelchair. A nine-mile shuttle ride costs $4 in scrip, compared to about $14 in scrip for the same taxi ride, Rosenberg said.

“We went ahead and reduced some of the (shuttle) service so we could provide the opportunity to individuals to take the taxis. If you want to put this stuff in, you have to take some reduction in and see how it works,” Fong said.

Since the vans were cut back, Chick’s office has logged more than 50 complaints from seniors, said aide Eric Rose. Staff members are evaluating the van program and will report back to Chick with recommendations within a month, he said.

Meanwhile, senior advocates and family members have invited Medi-Ride officials to discuss the van service at 10 a.m. today at the Valley Storefront.

Some seniors, such as 90-year-old Zara Bigelman of North Hollywood, complain that they have had problems simply getting a shuttle to pick them up.

“I went upstairs and cried,” said Bigelman, who waited for a ride to the Valley Storefront but was never picked up.

Others complain that rides take far longer than they used to.

“We go way over to the other end of town,” said Mary Ruskin, an 83-year-old volunteer at the Bernardi Multipurpose Senior Center in Van Nuys, who lives only a few blocks away. “It’s not so easy to ride 45 minutes to an hour in a different direction.”

Seventy-nine-year-old Ann Kuss lost control of her bowels during a two-hour ride from North Hollywood to her Encino home that she said normally took 45 minutes.

“I felt angry,” said Kuss, a wheelchair-bound stroke victim. “I was embarrassed.”

Senior advocates say that the vans sometimes don’t have working radios that are vital in medical emergencies, that elderly and disabled people in wheelchairs sometimes roll around unsecured in the vans, and that drivers make unsafe lane changes and illegal turns with passengers on board.

“The vans are not safe,” said Dorie Gradwohl, director of the Valley Storefront.

Three drivers who asked not to be identified put the blame on tight scheduling.

“They don’t give us enough time to go from point A to point B,” said one driver. “The schedule does not allow for human error.”

Rosenberg said Medi-Ride should not be blamed for the city’s van cutbacks, which he said is the source of any problems.

“You have a serious (van) reduction and the anticipation of the city that the taxis will pick up the slack,” Rosenberg said.

Complaints about the shuttles prompted Fong last week to order Medi-Ride to reduce from 27 to 23 the number of daily dial-a-ride stops, meaning that fewer passengers would be picked up daily.

Fong said his department is evaluating the CITYRIDE program and will continue to make changes, possibly adding more vans. But he said that the city is short on funding and that any van monies would have to come from reduced services in either the taxi or bus program.

Times correspondent Carmen Valencia contributed to this story.