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| | | Sudden Circulator stroller ban infuriates District parents | | January 29, 2010 | | | | Staff Writer | | A mix-up over city policy led to infuriated parents and surprised transportation officials recently after a private contractor instructed DC Circulator drivers to ban unfolded strollers on the popular red buses.
Without city approval, First Transit, the national contractor that supplies Circulator bus drivers, sent a notice to all of its drivers, according to Transportation Department spokesperson John Lisle. The First Transit notice told drivers to inform bus riders that children must be removed from strollers before boarding, and that the strollers must be folded up and placed out of the way.
A First Transit spokesperson said that the company's policy is an "industry-accepted practice" and a "safety standard."
But the contractor's rule "is not our policy," said Lisle. The city agency in fact has no rules about strollers, but officials are now developing a policy that "takes flexibility into account," he said.
Moving forward, according to the First Transit spokesperson, the company will "work with the client to determine whether [the hold-and-stow approach] is the safest and most acceptable for all of its riders."
On area Metrobuses, parents and caregivers must empty and fold the stroller, confirmed spokesperson Karen McNeil. "Our goal is to prevent tripping and ensure the safety of the child," she said in an interview.
But Circulator buses are far more open, with larger and lower doors than Metrobuses, and can easily fit an open stroller, pointed out parents who were told of the new policy-that-wasn't.
Earlier this month, Georgetown resident Ken Archer posted his Circulator experience on the transportation-focused blog Greater Greater Washington, drawing a firestorm of online comments and the attention of city transportation authorities. Archer was riding the bus on a frigid D.C. day when he was told that he would have to hold his child and fold the stroller or get off the Circulator.
Archer and his wife, Veronika, questioned the policy because the couple, who do not own a car, had ridden the Circulator with an open stroller "many, many times before," Veronika Archer said in an interview.
"If there had been a wheelchair or someone with a more pressing need, of course we would have waited for the next one," she said. "Most parents have common sense."
But their stroller wasn't blocking anyone's access, and the Archers followed up with the city transportation agency. In the end, Veronika Archer said she was happy with the reassurances she got from the District Department of Transportation that she could ride the Circulator — of which Archer said she is a "huge, huge fan" — as comfortably as she had in the past.
Parents posted similar tales in December at another Web site, dcurbanmom.com. One mother who rides the bus daily wanted to take an empty Circulator one stop in the snow without removing her bundled-up daughter from the stroller. The driver shut the door and drove away, the woman wrote.
Another rider, a mother of two, said she was told to get off the Circulator when she didn't obey the driver's instruction to fold the stroller holding her toddler. For her, what with the toddler, stroller, an infant she was already holding and two bags, it seemed to make more sense to stand with the stroller in the roomy central area — where the seats fold up — than to sit with a folded stroller.
"I wasn't trying to make trouble," she wrote on dcurbanmom.com.
A stroller policy in the Ontario, Canada, town of Thunder Bay would have allowed her to remain standing and riding the bus as long as other priority riders -- those in wheelchairs, those with walkers or with disabilities, and seniors -- did not need to occupy the same spot.
Thunder Bay's policy has become a model for the District Department of Transportation's effort to codify stroller rules on the Circulator, said Lisle. "It's a sensible policy," he said, noting that parents would still have to fold strollers on crowded Circulator buses.
Until the policy is in place, parents should not have any more problems with taking open strollers on the Circulator when there is enough room, said Lisle. "We've talked with First Transit, and they're working with us," he said.
Not everyone was sympathetic to the stroller-pushing D.C. parents' tales of woe. Some criticized the girth of today's strollers, likening them to Hummer vehicles and recalling the days of lightweight, easy-to-fold "umbrella" strollers. And tempers at Greater Greater Washington flared until moderator David Alpert shut down comments on the topic.
But D.C.'s brief struggle over strollers seems to have concluded peacefully, while strong feelings over stroller policies elsewhere have led to more than online barbs. In November, moms in Ottawa, Canada, successfully staged a demonstration to protest rules against bulky unfolded strollers. And last summer, a New Orleans mother stabbed a bus driver after being told to fold her child's stroller. | | | | | Log in to comment on this article |
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