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For years, disabled passengers have complained about Amtrak, that it's too hard for them to ride the train. Like the woman last year who said she was told incorrectly to pay extra for her wheelchair and her service dog. Now, a federal report looks at Amtrak's efforts to get better. NPR's Joseph Shapiro explains.
JOSEPH SHAPIRO, BYLINE: The new report from Amtrak's Office of Inspector General says Amtrak is trying harder. That it's well-intentioned - that's the report's description - but that Amtrak's efforts to better serve disabled customers are fragmented and fall short. I heard something similar from Aubrie Lee and Peter Saathoff-Harshfield. They love to ride trains, like their 3-week trip from West Coast to East Coast and back.
AUBRIE LEE: We are on Amtrak right now.
SHAPIRO: I caught them - with spotty phone reception - on the way home, riding the California Zephyr.
PETER SAATHOFF-HARSHFIELD: We are in Nevada, somewhere between Winnemucca and Reno, kind of in the middle of a desert.
SHAPIRO: Aubrie Lee's got muscular dystrophy. She uses a power wheelchair. Peter Saathoff-Harshfield has low vision.
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SHAPIRO: They blog and post on their YouTube channel about their train trips, from commuter rail to Amtrak.
SAATHOFF-HARSHFIELD: I'm standing on the mini-high at the north end of the platform.
SHAPIRO: On Amtrak, they look out the big windows with wonder at the American landscape - mountains, rivers, lightning in the night sky. Lee says the train itself is part of the destination.
LEE: Exactly. It is part of the adventure.
SHAPIRO: And on those trips, they also see what they want Amtrak to do better, like make it easier to buy tickets on the website and board a train when you use a wheelchair. To move around the train depends on what train they were on. On the routes east of Chicago...
SAATHOFF-HARSHFIELD: Our sleeper car was adjacent to the dining car, and Aubrie was actually able to drive her wheelchair over to the dining car and sit in the dining car and eat there with everyone else.
LEE: And also, that is not possible on the train that we're on right now.
SHAPIRO: Not possible because on routes west of Chicago, the dining car was on another level, and Lee spent the trip in the sleeper car. It's not just Lee. Many people who use wheelchairs prefer trains to airplanes. On a plane, a wheelchair goes into the cargo hold. Too often, it comes back broken. We heard from a lot of disability advocacy groups that Amtrak is - like the Inspector General's report says - serious about getting better.
CHARLES PETROF: Compared to 2020, they've come a long way today.
SHAPIRO: That's attorney Charles Petrof of Access Living, a Chicago advocacy center for disabled people. 2020 was the year Amtrak tried to charge two of Petrof's co-workers, who use wheelchairs, $25,000 for a round-trip ticket from Chicago to Springfield. Amtrak said it didn't have room for two wheelchairs and needed to reconfigure the car. NPR told that story, and Amtrak was embarrassed.
PETROF: Those $25,000 tickets, they are calling us regularly to make sure that doesn't happen again (laughter). They are trying to be proactive.
SHAPIRO: And Amtrak is asking people who are blind or who use wheelchairs to test out designs for new trains. David Capozzi, a member of Amtrak's board of directors, told us the new report was right - that Amtrak needs a clearer, more organized strategy to better serve its riders with disabilities.
Joseph Shapiro, NPR News.
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