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 Even before the ADA was enacted, we had a growing number of accessible buses in New York City. When I needed to travel downtown for meetings with staff at the Office of Veterans Affairs or other agencies, I boarded an accessible bus just outside our office building’s main entrance, and on my return trip, the accessible bus stop was just across the street. It couldn’t have been more convenient.
Wheelchair-accessible buses began arriving in New York City in 1981, primarily due to a lawsuit filed by this veterans organization in September of 1979 alleging planned outright violations of two New York State laws. One of these statutes—the State Public Buildings Law—stated very clearly that if a public building is newly constructed or substantially renovated, including public transportation stations and terminals, then accessibility had to be provided for all persons with disabilities.
New York City Transit’s first “Capital Improvement Plan” at that time called for purchasing 900 new
full-size buses, none of which would be wheelchair-accessible, and the substantial renovation of 32 existing subway stations without any disability access improvements whatsoever. By the time this lawsuit was settled officially in 1985, I’m guessing that there were well over 1,000 new wheelchair-accessible buses in operation, and today there are more than 80 wheelchair-accessible NYCT subway stations.
Using the accessible buses between 1981 and 1985 wasn’t always easy. One had to keep a sharp eye out to locate, on average, the one in five buses that was accessible. And you had to hope that the bus driver had been trained to operate the wheelchair lift and the wheelchair securement system.
But this veterans organization took a very positive approach with help from our friends in other city disability groups. We published a “How to Ride New York City’s Accessible Buses” guide that featured illustrations of the boarding/disembarking process, and we updated it four different times. We started a “Bus Driver Awards” program that gave consumers an opportunity to nominate a bus driver who went out of his/her way to provide excellent service to wheelchair users or others with disabilities. We operated this recognition program into the beginning of this century.
We trained many bus operators who formerly worked for private companies, known today simply as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s MTA Bus. We even duplicated and distributed “lift keys” to consumers upon request, so if an operator didn’t have his/her lift key on a given day, the consumer could let him/her use a borrowed key to operate the lift successfully.
For me personally, I used wheelchair-accessible buses frequently between their 1981 arrival and August of 1988 from our Park Avenue /East 29th Street “Midtown South” office to New York City’s Civic Center in lower Manhattan, Apart from meetings at the Veterans Affairs Office, there were City Council meetings and hearings at City Hall; meetings at the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities; and, meetings with the State Office of Advocate for the Disabled staff, and on just one memorable day, a meeting with then-Governor Mario Cuomo at Two World Trade Center. Once this organization moved its office to the Borough of Queens in 1988, taking three different bus lines to reach Civic Center simply would have wasted way too much work time.
Using wheelchair-accessible buses in the 1980s was relaxing and convenient because bus service in Manhattan during daytime business hours is frequent indeed. And finding an available on-street parking space in lower Manhattan during the day truly is the “trying to find a needle in a haystack” cliché.
Nowadays, when I drive my van to Manhattan for an occasional meeting, I typically either give myself a lot of lead time to find a parking space, or pay a king’s ransom to park it in a parking garage or lot. But if you live in, work in or visit New York City and a bus or subway ride will take you to your destination, I highly recommend New York City Transit’s accessible buses or subway stations.
Next and Final Installment: the author describes his public and private transportation experiences around the continent…it’s all good!
Terry Moakley
Chair of the VetsFirst Committee
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Our vets deserve greater access to transportation for work, school, medical care, other health services and recreation or leisure activities. Help make it happen!
Go to http://veteransdialogue.ideascale.com/ to participate in a national online dialogue sponsored by The Federal Coordinating Council on Access and Mobility and the U.S. Department of Defense. The dialogue, “Strengthening Transportation Choices So We Can Serve Those Who Have Served Their Country,” is for veterans, service members, their families, and community service providers. It will be open through June 8. Once you register, you’ll be able to share an idea, or comment or vote on someone else’s idea! The best ideas bubble up to the top.
Our vets deserve greater access to transportation for work, school, medical care, other health services and recreation or leisure activities. Help make it happen!
Go to http://veteransdialogue.ideascale.com/ to participate in a national online dialogue sponsored by The Federal Coordinating Council on Access and Mobility and the U.S. Department of Defense.
The dialogue, “Strengthening Transportation Choices So We Can Serve Those Who Have Served Their Country,” is for veterans, service members, their families, and community service providers. It will be open through June 8. Once you register, you’ll be able to share an idea, or comment or vote on someone else’s idea! The best ideas bubble up to the top.
 Paul J. Tobin, president of VetsFirst and United Spinal Association participated in a press conference on May 2 hosted by New York City Comptroller John C. Liu calling on Mayor Michael Bloomberg to modify the proposed “Taxi of Tomorrow” agreement before sending the contract to the Comptroller’s Office for approval as required by the City Charter. Liu vowed to reject the agreement, until New York’s entire taxi fleet follows in the footsteps of cities like London and makes all cabs wheelchair accessible.
In December 2011, a federal court ruled that the City, through its Taxi and Limousine Commission, was in violation of the ADA.
The City’s proposal for a separate dispatch system for passengers using wheelchairs fails to address the underlying problem — there are not enough wheelchair accessible taxis in New York City. Only 231 of the City’s 13,000 yellow cabs, less than 2 percent, are wheelchair accessible.
VetsFirst believes this is a slap in the face, not only to New Yorkers who use wheelchairs, but all of our nation’s disabled vets.
“Today, more than 22 years after the ADA and after 10 years of war, the City of New York is consciously attempting to discriminate against disabled veterans who use wheelchairs. It is unconscionable and we applaud Comptroller Liu for not only doing what is legal, but what is right,” Tobin said
In April 2012, Mayor Michael Bloomberg rolled out New York City’s new “Taxi of Tomorrow”–Nissan’s NV200. Despite all the bells and whistles touted by the City, accessibility is not one of the key features of this cab.
“The new contract for taxis presents us with a historic opportunity to right a wrong that New Yorkers with disabilities have been fighting to achieve for nearly two decades,” Comptroller Liu said.
“Requiring cabs to have independent passenger climate controls is nice, but when you fail to make them accessible to a growing number of New Yorkers, it’s not just a slap in the face, it’s illegal. We will send back any plan that does not uphold the civil rights demanded by the Americans with Disabilities Act,” he explained.
Read Terry Moakley’s recent VetsFirst blog: The Origin of Accessible Public Transportation in New York City.
As a proud veteran who uses a wheelchair, I learned early on that there is more to life than walking. When I started working at VetsFirst back in the mid-1970s, our local public transit agency was pushing the idea of purchasing just 100 minibuses to serve all people with disabilities and aging persons. I became involved in transportation advocacy because I understood that more and better accessible transportation was needed.
I can remember the very first transportation meeting that I attended. It was in July of 1976 and the meeting was held at a New York City Human Resources Administration office. This agency still exists today and it still has the same mission: to provide social services to persons in need. To put it bluntly, the HRA, as it was commonly known, was the wrong place to be talking about any improvements for people with disabilities to public transportation.
Let me re-create the inaccessible transportation picture in the “Big Apple” for you back then. There were 465 subway stations and not one was accessible to any person with a disability. There were also in excess of 4,500 public, full-size buses and none of those were accessible to disabled people either.
The only accessible vehicles that I can recall from that time was a small door-to-door transportation service operated by the Vera Institute of Justice, but it served primarily disabled and older persons who lived in the lower East side of Manhattan. That’s one neighborhood in one borough (or county) with a total of five boroughs. We needed more than 100 accessible minibuses. There were also accessible ambulettes, or medical transportation, but they were expensive and we were just disabled, and not really ill most of the time.
Then, Jimmy Carter was elected the 39th President of the United States in November of 1976. At that time and into the next year, there was a California-based company that was planning to build “the bus of the future,” known simply as the Transbus. It would be fully wheelchair-accessible. This fact helped the disabled community in New York City get galvanized and organized, and angry, knowing that an accessible full-size bus was in the offing.
In the late summer of 1977, a bunch of us got together and we blocked traffic at rush hour across First Avenue in Manhattan near the 59th St. Bridge connecting Manhattan and Queens. We demanded that New York City Transit purchase the Transbus. We made all the papers as well as many television and radio stations, but much more importantly, we made our point: people with disabilities had the same right to use public transportation as any other citizen.
In 1978, the Carter Administration issued draft regulations to implement Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act. This was the first set of proposed rules where I ever saw the term “key” station used, to describe the type of existing rail station that was so important that it must be made accessible to persons with disabilities. But, that administration never finalized those rules, so when Ronald Reagan was elected our 40th President in November of 1980, these regulations simply went away.
However, more than a year earlier, our current Senior Vice-President for Legal Affairs, Jim Weisman, joined our staff and in September of 1979, this organization sued New York City Transit under two New York State laws. Five years later we won this lawsuit, but NYCT began buying wheelchair-accessible buses in 1981, manufactured by either General Motors or the Grumman Corporation. The afore-mentioned Transbus was never manufactured.
Today, as in all US communities, the bus system in New York City is fully accessible, and has been so since 1995. There are approximately 80 accessible key stations in the subway system, with more on the way. And, there are numerous accessible key stations in the Long Island Rail Road and Metro North commuter rail systems, and the New Jersey Transit and PATH systems. If you are a wheelchair user or have any other type of disability, moving around the “Big Apple” is much easier the public transit way today.
Next Installment: How I’ve used public transit to get around New York City.
Terry Moakley’s involvement in public transportation made a difference in New York City for disabled veterans. Beginning May 7, you will have an opportunity to participate in a national online dialogue sponsored by The Federal Coordinating Council on Access and Mobility and the U.S. Department of Defense. The dialogue, “Strengthening Transportation Choices So We Can Serve Those Who Have Served Their Country,” is for veterans, service members, their families, and community service providers. For more information about how to participate, please visit www.projectaction.org.
Terry Moakley
Chair of the VetsFirst Committee
Recently I became aware of and spent some time on the website www.fedshirevets.gov. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount and quality of information there that might help a military veteran of any age or rank to land a decent job. You will also find similar important information for certain family members of military veterans.
President Obama issued an Executive Order applicable to federal government agencies in 2009, essentially requiring them to increase efforts to hire veterans and qualifying family members. And, some noteworthy improvements have been made according to the most recent statistics from June of 2011.
The percentage of veterans employed in the federal executive branch is up to 28% of all federal employees. And the percentage of disabled veterans among veteran employees is up to 8.8%.
Keep in mind that federal government agency employment accounts for approximately 22% of all persons employed in this country.
Here are a few sections of www.fedshirevets.gov that are “must-sees.” Check out the short video on the Veterans section of the Job Seekers tab. Be prepared, get your ducks in a row, do your homework, etc: whatever cliché you prefer, start out by getting a first-class resume together. You want to present yourself and your skills in the brightest light possible.
Also on the Job Seekers page, you can find very useful information for military members separating out of the service, the Transition Assistance Program. There is also a link to the Veterans Employment and Training Service (VETS) of the U.S. Department of Labor.
I found the Frequently Asked Questions portion of the Job Seekers page really helpful. It takes one to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, where you can learn a great deal about how “veterans’ preference” works, about “derived veterans’ preference” if you are the widow/widower, spouse or mother of a veteran, and about going to another useful website, www.usajobs.gov, to learn about currently available federal agency positions.
Since there are federal government agencies located throughout our nation and at U.S. facilities throughout the world, you may want to also click on the Agency Directory tab of the Feds Hire Vets website. You will find there the name, e-mail address and telephone number of the individual in charge of this program at each participating federal government agency. Clearly, this should be a shortcut for a qualifying military veteran or widow/widower, spouse or mother to get a question answered or some local federal agency job information.
I used the VA Vocational Rehabilitation program to continue my education after my disabling injury, and looking back, I know that it helped me to pursue a very satisfying career in the private sector for 36 years. The website www.fedshirevets.gov can help a qualifying veteran or family member land the fulfilling career that we all deserve.
Terry Moakley
Chair of the VetsFirst Committee
Researchers are coordinating a study of 4,000 veterans who served in the U.S. Army Chemical Corps during the Vietnam era (1965-1973) designed to learn if high blood pressure (hypertension) and some chronic respiratory diseases are related to Agent Orange exposure during the Vietnam War.
The U.S. military sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides on trees and vegetation during the Vietnam War.
The Army Chemical Corps Vietnam-Era Veterans Health Study follows a request by Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki for VA to conduct research on the association between herbicide exposure and high blood pressure (hypertension), as a basis for understanding if hypertension is related to military service in Vietnam.
The Army Chemical Corps personnel were responsible for the maintenance and distribution or application of chemicals for military operations. Army Chemical Corps personnel who served in Vietnam during the Vietnam War constitute the largest group of Army Vietnam Veterans who were thought to have had the greatest potential exposure to herbicides.
VA is also interested in learning more about the relationship between herbicide exposure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
As part of the study, researchers are conducting telephone interviews, reviewing medical records, and measuring the blood pressure and lung function of these veterans.
This study is a follow-up of a similar study conducted between 1999-2000 that demonstrated odds ratios for diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and chronic respiratory disease were significantly elevated among those Vietnam veterans who sprayed herbicides.
Va has examined the health status of individuals who served in the Army Chemical Corps since the 1990s.
Researchers have two questions:
1.Is the risk of high blood pressure (hypertension) related to Agent Orange exposure during service in Vietnam?
2.Is the risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), including chronic bronchitis and emphysema, related to Agent Orange exposure during service in Vietnam?
Researchers have already selected participants from earlier Army Chemical Corps study rosters, and they cannot accept volunteers for this study. Each veteran selected for this study represents other veterans with similar characteristics.
If you are a veteran who may have been exposed to Agent Orange, you can learn more about exposure locations and related diseases here.
April is Occupational Therapy Month. VetsFirst would like to to recognize the important role occupational therapists (OTs) play in helping veterans living with disabilities reclaim their independence and reintegrate into their communities.
OTs are key players on the healthcare team of thousands of veterans of all ages. There are a number of reasons for this. First off, OTs simply do it all–from assisting vets with activities of daily living, such as dressing, bathing and grooming, to more advanced activities such as cooking, shopping, driving, parenting, and returning to work.
OTs also assess a person’s physical abilities and figure out ways to improve them. Sometimes that means adapting a veteran’s surroundings or providing mobility equipment or assistive technology so that they can overcome the hurdles of living with a disability.
It’s no surprise that the VA is one of the largest employers of OTs. Many veterans come home with a variety of disabling conditions, so it helps to have a healthcare professional skilled at treating them all.
The focus of occupational therapy treatment varies greatly, depending on the needs of each veteran. For instance, a veteran living with a spinal cord injury may need support in learning to operate a power wheelchair, preventing pressure ulcers, and maintaining strength and range of motion. Another veteran living with a traumatic brain injury may need help remembering household chores and other activities. And a veteran living with post-traumatic stress disorder may need help developing relaxation techniques and coping skills or support to prevent depression and substance abuse.
OTs fit into all of these roles and that’s why we should all be thankful for the work they do.
Job well done!
Question: I am currently serving in the Air Force and recently returned back to the states from the Middle East. While overseas I really did a number on my back, and I am scheduled to be discharged in six weeks. My discharge may or may not be extended due to a Medical Evaluation Board/Physical Evaluation Board. I am hoping you might be able to give me a basic heads-up on how the VA might look at degenerative disk disease.
Answer: The VA defines disability of the musculoskeletal system, including the spine, as the inability, due to damage or infection, to perform the normal working movements of the body with normal exertion, strength, speed, coordination and endurance.
When evaluating a spinal cord-related disability, the VA is required to take into account both anatomical damage and functional loss. Functional loss may be due to deformity, improper nerve function (defective innervation), adhesions, atrophy or pain. Disability due to diseases (such as arthritis, degenerative joint or disc disease, or osteoporosis) that were incurred in, or are the result of, military service may be compensated as well.
Paraplegia and quadriplegia due to a spinal cord injury or disorder are rated in terms of the loss of function and their effect on the veteran’s ability to earn a living wage. In fact, the entire VA compensation scheme is based on the average impairment of earning capacity.
I would suggest you obtain a complete set of all of your private treatment and military medical records prior to your discharge. Assuming you do not receive a medical discharge once you file your claim with the VA, under the Veterans Claims Assistance Act of 2000 the VA will be required to provide you with a medical examination to make a determination on your claim.
Once you have submitted all of the evidence that you have to the VA and the VA has gathered all of the evidence that it is required to under the VCAA, the VA will determine your current level of disability. This will establish a disability rating, which will in turn establish the level of your monthly disability compensation payments. The VA will also make a decision as to the effective date of your award of benefits.
Please bear in mind that this is an extremely brief overview of what can be a very complicated topic and process. VetsFirst also held lengthy discussions with the veteran who asked this question, and he is currently receiving assistance from a qualified service officer in his local community. If you have questions, please feel free to ask through Ask VetsFirst at helpdesk.vetsfirst.org or 877.483.8717.
Since Tax Day, usually April 15th of each year, falls this year on a Sunday, federal income tax returns must be filed by Tuesday, April 17th, as do state income tax returns in most states around the country that collect state taxes. Since I started to do my own taxes generations ago, I still follow that ritual. But for military personnel, veterans and their families, lots of free help is available worldwide to insure that you collect, or pay, Uncle Sam on time.
My Congressional representative sent me an e-blast a couple weeks ago on this topic, much of which I did not know. So, I did a bit more online searching where I found some excellent advice which is good to share. First off, the Internal Revenue Service, better known as the IRS, operates the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, and one of its strongest partners is an entity called the Armed Forces Tax Council (AFTC).
The AFTC tax coordinators from all branches reach out to all military personnel and their families worldwide. Most military installations house a VITA program which can help active duty personnel by providing free tax advice and tax preparation. Moreover, VITA staff overseas is trained to address military-specific tax issues, such as combat zone tax benefits and the impact of new Earned Income Tax Credit guidelines.
There’s much more to VITA beyond the great work it does for our military around the world. More than 12,000 VITA free tax preparation sites are up and running in the homeland, too, helping citizens who earn less than $50,000 per year get their taxes filed on time. How does the IRS do this? They partner with non-profit and community-based organizations to recruit taxpayer assistance volunteers. I wonder how many of the people being helped through this unheralded program are veterans of military service.
The IRS also offers a Tax Counseling for the Elderly program, or CTE. The IRS partners with the AARP which operates its Tax-Aide program during the filing season. Trained and certified AARP Tax-Aide volunteers help taxpayers with low to moderate income, with special attention paid to those 60 and older. Once again, I’d bet that lots of vets over 60 years of age are using this program.
You can find your nearest Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) facility by calling the IRS toll-free at 1-800-906-9887, or searching VITA at www.irs.gov. To locate the nearest AARP Tax-Aide site, telephone 1-888-227-7669, or visit www.aarp.org.
Terry Moakley
Chair of the VetsFirst Committee
Have you recently returned from military service? VetFirst recommends using the Returning OEF/OIF/OND Veterans Call Center to help you take advantage of your VA benefits today.
Returning OEF/OIF/OND Veterans Call Center can assist you in a number of ways, including
• Obtaining information regarding VA Benefits
• Connecting to a live representative to answer your questions
• Finding out what VA Benefits are available for OEF/OIF/OND Vets
Call: 1-866-606-8216
What else can the VA do for me? Here’s a good place to find out.
If you have any other benefits-related questions, don’t forget to Ask Us.
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