Irmo, SC – My son and I live in Irmo, South Carolina just outside of Columbia. He is my first and only and about to turn 18!
I’m legally blind and had my first eye surgery when I was 8 years old to remove cataracts. My latest surgery is a more serious operation to repair and rebuild the nerves in the back of my eyes. Since I don’t drive I’ve been active with Able South Carolina advocating for better services, especially better transit and paratransit.
In 2007, I started riding transit on my own though I had taken buses before as a young child with my mother. Then, as a young adult, I wanted to go places by myself. Transit allowed me to get to work or go to appointments or to visit friends.
Unfortunately, getting around by transit or paratransit, is not easy. I live 2 miles outside the radius so the disability bus will not pick me up at my house. The DART (Disability bus) stops at a nearby store but it is a 3-5 minute drive from my house. I have an AFO on my foot, a knee brace on my left knee and I use a cane or a walker so walking on the uneven sidewalks and standing an hour on the grass waiting at the bus stop is not possible for me. My only option is to take an Uber or Lyft just to get to the bus stop or hope that friends or family can give me a ride.
Busses run 7 days a week but if I miss a bus, I often have to wait an hour. Many of the bus stops don’t have seats and are just grass with lots of ant hills. Standing for an hour with ants crawling up my legs is really miserable. We really need better bus stops and buses to run more often.
In addition, the buses need to go more places farther out from the center of Columbia. For example, my son and I would like to be to attend Adult Education Classes but the buses don’t go anywhere near there. And in this hot summer weather, we’d really like to go over the bridge to the lake to swim or go out on a boat but the buses don’t go to Lexington.
The disability bus (DART) is also expensive. On Comet, the fixed route bus, you can ride all day for $4 but on DART you have to pay $4 every time you get on. That’s $8 roundtrip plus more if you need to do an errand after work (and more in my case since I need to pay just to get to a bus stop.)
We need more frequent service, more service to more places, and reasonably priced fares. We need Congress to step up and fund our public transit system as if they were riding it every day.