I wonder how Lyft and Uber have avoided ADA requirements.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/nyregion/uber-disabili...
https://www.transit.dot.gov/regulations-and-guidance/civil-r...
The relevant requirements are that the following must be equivalent for everyone regardless of disability.
(2) Response time (if the system is demand responsive);
(f) Reservations capability (if the system is demand responsive); (g) Any constraints on capacity or service availability; (h) Restrictions priorities based on trip purpose (if the system is demand responsive).
At any rate, the ADA is a popular topic to sue over (see California drive by ADA lawsuits, for example). You can do everything right but still expect a few lawsuits at least. A lawsuit itself doesn’t prove anything until judgement has happened.
In my experience, only about 5% of the rides I've had end up being on vehicles large enough to stow a motorized chair, so equivalent response time could mean a major shift in the type of vehicles used.
IMO, ADA is a great example of overbearing government regulation. It doesn't leave much room for "reasonable" accommodations and dictates solutions. (Case in point, my condo building can't use a portion of trash rooms as recycle storage, which gives large environmental benefits, because of wheelchair accessibility rules.. but why does this matter on floors where wheelchair bound residents don't live?)
> why does this matter on floors where wheelchair bound residents don't live?
Because residents aren't the only people who could be using that trash room. Because a resident could be injured while living there.
I think it's weird how the default experience is apparently to be exclusionary.
My building was built before recycles and computer became a huge thing. Trash room only has a trash shoot. To dispose compost, I need to take an elevator 30 floors down to dispose compost, which takes a lot of time.
If the building could allocate a third of trash rooms to store recycles, rotate them if a resident became disabled, we'd be in a situation where able bodied people are better off and disabled people are no worse off. Instead ADA is too restrictive, so we're in a suboptimal spot
Regarding your condo building: separate is never equal. Requiring people with disabilities to only live on certain floors is discriminatory. Disability is perhaps the only minority that anyone can enter into at any time, through no action of their own. You can't say that you don't need to worry about accessibility of floors where there are no wheelchair users, because you can't predict who could need one in the future, when or why they will need one.
Of course, it's obvious that's working as intended - providing disability services is often treated by businesses as nothing but a cost center. Never-mind the fact that the elderly would be the perfect early users for comparable services + autonomous vehicles.
I think the only place in the US where the experience was remotely good was New York, but even then wait times were closer to 20 minutes instead of 2 minutes as they would be for able-bodied people.
The only other thing I can say about this is that Uber/Lyft drivers are required to store a foldable wheelchair upon request. And unlike taxi drivers, they can't just drive by you when they see your chair. In that respect, the experience is better. But there are too many situations when a foldable wheelchair is not possible/desirable, and a true WAV is required.
"Uber located a WAV in 27 of 49 different attempts (a 55% “success” rate). Lyft Access Mode located a WAV for only 3 of 65 attempts (a 5% “success” rate) rendering the app non-functional for wheelchair users."
http://www.nylpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Left-Behind-...