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International_Tea259 t1_itt3saa wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Cambridge completely eliminated parking minimums yesterday!! by RealBurhanAzeem

Why is it a good thing if someone who is legally blind has to drive? Transit should be expanded instead, that's the best thing for disabled people since they can just get shuttled around on low floor busses for like 60$/month maybe even lower(cars that cost less then 100/month with all costs combined are freaking rare).

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[deleted] t1_itt5ai1 wrote

I agree that transit for disabled people should be expanded (we have The Ride, but it's chronically underfunded and almost useless). And I keep saying this, and that we should do this before taking away the only other real alternative for a lot of disabled people (driving). And yet, the only interest seems to be in reducing the number of cars on the road. Frankly, I think that because real accommodations for the disabled would require subsidizing taxis or rideshares (not mass transit), the people involved don't want to do it because that would still be cars on the road. It doesn't personally affect them, so they don't care.

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International_Tea259 t1_itt70oj wrote

Mass transit is actually good for disables people since it's insanely cheap, and simple to use since busses are tall so they don't have a complicated boarding process and can also have designated seats for them. Especially if someone is in a wheel chair, stuff like low floor busses with ramps for wheel chairs which is honestly a standard on modern day busses. Plus with transit getting better everyone benefits! Since less people will NEED to drive which means that there will be less cars on the road thuss reducing congestion.

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[deleted] t1_itt8zah wrote

  1. All public transit should be fee-free and paid through taxes.
  2. Yes, busses can be good for certain disabled people, but not all. There are a lot of disabled people not in wheelchairs. And busses also have limited wheelchair capacity.
  3. I want expanded mass transit, too. But these things have to happen side-by-side. We need a ring line. We need a line that goes from Medford to Somerville to Cambridge to Allston that then also links up all of the Green Lines.
  4. We also have things in-between. In addition to essentially cars or minivans, The Ride also has small busses. Subsidizing taxis and rideshares is easy and doesn't require much more management cost, but if we really wanted to be efficient we would expand The Ride and make it more effective/efficient. As-is, it's extremely unavailable, slow, and late.
    1. Edit: Also, The Ride is part of the state government. It's not something that Cambridge could implement by itself.
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