Love and Longing in Paratransit

As an adolescent and young adult, the bus and subway shaped my experience of New York City. Since acquiring a disability three years ago, I get around the city primarily using Access-A-Ride (AAR), the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s paratransit service. AAR has reshaped my life, shuttling me to and from appointments, but also to countless movies, dates, and protests. It brought me to the Queer Liberation March, where friends wheeled me along the route. And traveling with friends or crushes, AAR itself has become a social space where I flirt, fight, cry, and gossip.

Disabled people, like all people, exist with full complexity and life experiences, but AAR assumes that my life is smaller than the lives of people who use the bus or subway. Built for medical or administrative appointments with defined schedules, it expects me to know 24 hours in advance precisely when I will leave from and arrive at my destination. In an email exchange with Michael Ring, Vice Chair of the Accessible Transit Advisory Committee of the MTA, he noted that AAR “is really good at getting people to an appointment that is a specific length of time at a specific time of day. It’s good if you have nothing else to do that entire day.”

AAR is habitually late. On a recent Sunday night, I met my friend Isabelle at Film Forum for a 5:30 screening of After Hours. I had set my pickup from South Brooklyn for 4 pm, which would get me there a little before 5. At 3:41, I got a call from the driver, saying he’d be there in seven minutes. I got to the cinema at 4:45, having luckily hit some traffic, texted Isabelle that I arrived, then filed for a Film Forum membership with my disability discount, and got a coffee and banana bread while she walked over. I scheduled my pickup for right after the movie, forgetting there was a Q&A with one of the actors. I received a text at 7:16 that my car would be arriving in 39 minutes and was excited that I could catch some of the Q&A after all. Six minutes later, I missed a call from the driver and called him back at 7:29. He was seven minutes away and the Q&A wasn’t over. I considered sneaking back in to catch the rest of the discussion, but I didn’t want to miss my ride and decided to wait in the lobby. Thirty minutes later, he still hadn’t arrived. I finally got home, hungry and tired, around an hour and forty-five minutes later than scheduled.

When I was going to the Rite of Spring at the Armory, a performance I’d wanted to see for a decade, AAR was so late that I arrived sobbing profusely, worried that I’d missed it. I missed the cake at my best friend’s birthday after getting a text that my car had arrived, on time, only to find that it was not there.

Paratransit can be an isolating way to travel, so I bring non-disabled friends along into my world. Sometimes, I meet interesting people at parties or bars and spontaneously invite them to take AAR home with me. Sometimes, I declare that I am traveling with a personal care attendant when I schedule the ride to sneak in a friend. Last January, my friend Marina came with me to Brighton Beach. The driver took a phone call in another language. He apologized, explaining it was a friend from his city that he hadn’t heard from in a while, and Marina asked “Tbilisi?” recognizing the Georgian he spoke. The driver excitedly chatted about Georgians in Brighton. When we got out, he insisted on giving me free fare.

On a ride to a Valentine’s Day party, I once unexpectedly received a nude from someone with whom I was enmeshed in a long-distance flirtation. I glanced to see if the older woman I was riding with noticed, and stuffed my phone into the pocket of my overalls.

One messy evening, I flirted and fought with an ex who showed up unexpectedly to my open mic, then smoked a joint with his new girlfriend. When the huge white and blue van pulled up, the driver gave me a huge warm smile and said, “Hi, I’m Gary. I’ll be your driver.” As we approached the Brooklyn Bridge, Gary asked if I wanted the lights on or off. I’d never been asked that question. The late night in a dark van with the city lights shining all around was beautiful.

Since I never have any idea of when I will arrive or depart, I always travel with a book, along with the $2.90 fare I must carry in exact change. I know how much to pad my trips to allow for a cup of coffee, and how to schedule rides with some flexibility if I’m leaving a date or a party. I asked Michael Ring what change to AAR would most benefit the social lives of its users; he suggested it would be if it could operate like Uber, “so people with disabilities can come and go at will and we would get to celebrate occasions together. Nobody actually knows when the party is going to end and it’s cruel to ask people to plan that in advance.”

I dream of a paratransit system that allows for at-will trips, that respects people’s time and agency, and recognizes the whole personhood of its users. But I’ve also come to see it as a space where I talk to my drivers, fellow passengers, and the friends I bring along with me. I’ve ridden with college professors on their way to class, young adults dressed up for a night out, and older adults on their way to senior centers. Last winter, I commiserated with a woman on my ride that all the trees had lost their leaves, and she pointed out something I have never noticed before, that we could see all the bird’s nests in the empty branches. I never see a bare tree without thinking of that now.