When ride hailing companies came to New York, accessibility wasn’t high on their agenda. But just as New York City has slowly started to regulate these businesses in recent years, so too has the city begun to demand more from businesses like Uber, Lyft, and Via when it comes to accessibility.
According to an ordinance from the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission that went into effect in 2019, Uber, Lyft, and Via – the city’s dominant ride-hailing companies – can meet the city’s accessibility requirements by a percentage of wheelchair-accessible travel requests within a certain period of time. In short, ride hailing companies need to start serving wheelchair users the same way they would any other customer – or at least start providing fair service.
A report released this spring assessing the car rental industry’s progress on accessibility from July 2019 to September 2020 found that some progress had indeed been made. During that time, Uber, Lyft and Via had to complete 80% of accessible travel requests within 15 minutes and 90% of accessible travel requests within 30 minutes. Although the assessment period was extended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the report found that Uber met both minimum requirements in June, July, August, and September 2020, Lyft met both requirements in two of the four months, and Via only had one month in that it meets both requirements. The report notes that the ban on community driving during much of the pandemic last year may have affected the Via, which is mostly focused on community driving.
The Taxi and Limousine Commission characterized these performance metrics by and large as signs of improvement. “The 2020 report (wheelchair accessible vehicle) showed significant compliance by high volume providers over the reporting period despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 emergency, and also highlighted some areas that we believe need improvement” TLC Commissioner Aloysee Heredia Jarmoszuk said in a statement emailed. But with a tougher mandate this year – companies have to fill 80% of requests in 10 minutes or less and 90% in 15 minutes or less – some advocates of people with disabilities think the progress made so far is insufficient. “I think the fundamental problem is that there is still no reliable, affordable service for people who for some reason need an accessible vehicle,” said Justin Wood, director of politics at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, a nonprofit Organization that has published reports highlighting the inequality of cost and reliability of accessible and non-accessible carpooling.
Heredia Jarmoszuk also acknowledged potential for improvement. “While NYC has seen a proven improvement in accessible service from high-volume providers, the TLC recognizes that the industry has a long way to go and together we will continue to improve the availability of accessible services in the rental vehicle and taxi sectors,” she wrote.
Inadequate wheelchair accessibility to vehicles has been the subject of litigation, including a 2017 class action lawsuit in New York City in which plaintiffs argued that Uber discriminated against people with disabilities by not providing enough wheelchair-accessible cars. The taxi and limousine commission issued an ordinance this year according to which 25% of all trips with rented vehicles must be made in wheelchair-accessible cars by mid-2023, even if the driver has not applied for a barrier-free vehicle.
Uber, Lyft and Via sued this rule and reached an agreement with the TLC in 2019 that gave companies another option to meet their accessibility requirements; the waiting time requirement. In the 2019 agreement, the so-called “Central Shipping Exception” was specified. Uber, Lyft and Via are each certified as “Accessible Vehicle Dispatchers” in the city; which are subject to the obligation to wait. For the majority of the time period analyzed in the city’s most recent report, Uber, Lyft and Via were the only certified accessible vehicle dispatchers.
According to the report, only 267 for-hire vehicle bases are subject to the original mandate instead of the waiting period. In the past year, these bases had to make at least 10% of all journeys in a wheelchair-accessible vehicle. The report says that 84% of these bases did not meet this requirement.
With the exception of centralized shipping, Uber currently serves the highest number of connected bases with 366 bases, compared to the 79 from Lyft and the 55 from Via. This means that when these bases receive a call or a request from someone who is driving in an accessible vehicle, they can forward that request to one of these dispatchers.
Josh Gold, director of Policy and Communications at Uber, said that in those scenarios, customers are still only directly dealing with the base they are using, while Uber fulfills the request behind the scenes, including through a website that Uber does for Connected bases has been created for this purpose. “The TLC continues to make good suggestions, and one of the things that they have focused on from the start is that not only can individuals access the Uber app, but others who use their local car base, their local paint station, call or their local black car base – that they have that access just like someone who would use a standard vehicle, ”Gold said.
Gold added that he was satisfied with the progress shown in the report, as were representatives from Lyft. “Lyft has worked throughout the pandemic to ensure New Yorkers have access to (wheelchair-accessible) vehicles and we continue to seek ways to improve our service during this unprecedented time,” wrote spokesman CJ Macklin via email. Via representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
In the next report, these companies will be rated on more stringent metrics. According to the data from this report, there was only one month in which one of the companies fulfilled 80% of requests within 10 minutes. That was Uber in August 2020. That month Lyft only met 66% of drivers and Via only 53% of drivers within 10 minutes.
Wood said these wait times are still not as severe as they could be and that more could be done to encourage the expansion of accessible carpooling. Wood mentioned the possibility that companies could incentivize drivers to use wheelchair accessible vehicles at higher wages, or that the city would prohibit companies from introducing price increases for accessible travel, as Portland, Oregon has done. “We are for the city that is taking other policies to increase the availability of accessible vehicles and make sure they are more affordable,” said Wood.