City considers taxi vouchers to make up for gap in DATS service

Edmontonians with limited physical and cognitive abilities may have another option for getting to medical appointments by this spring or summer.

People who rely on DATS (Disability Adult Transit Service) have complained about having to wait two or three hours to be picked up, even though they've pre-booked the ride.

Last week, city council agreed with Coun. Mike Nickel's idea to look into giving DATS users taxi vouchers to pay for rides to thedoctor's office or hospital.

"These are some of the most vulnerable people we've got in this city," Nickel said in an interview Monday with CBC News. "They deserve some choice. They deserve better customer service."

Pilot project

The city will look into doing a pilot project that would compensate taxi drivers an estimated $8 to $12 per ride to pick up DATS riders inaccessible vans.

Council agreed unanimously that Edmonton Transit Service should explore what it would take to set up such aservice and what it would cost.

Adult DATS users pay $3.50 a ride, the same as fare on an ETS bus.

The proposed pilot would give a test group of about 100 people vouchers to top up what a taxi driver might expect to get paid for a regular fare, Nickel said.

The rider would hand the voucher to the taxi driver and the city would compensate for the difference.

A fresh pick-up option is welcome news to riders like Levi Lawton, a 22-year-old NAIT student who has epilepsy and uses a wheelchair. Lawton takes DATS on a regular basis to school and medical appointments.

He's thankful for the service but believes the system needs more buses.

"I don't really care if it's more minivans that are adapted or if it's more big DATS buses. I just want to see more vehicles with DATS name on it and more drivers that we can rely on."

The city has 92 vehicles in its main DATS fleet and another 80 contract vehicles. About 10,000 Edmontonians are registered DATS clientsbut ETS said roughly 6,500 use the service on a regular basis.

City council approved an extra $1.6 million for DATS service over the past two years, on top of the $30 million in the service's annual budget.

DATS service monitored

ETS spokesperson Rowan Anderson said DATS "continuously projects and monitors trip demand in order to meet their target of 98 per cent accommodation of trip requests."

In January, he said, the city accommodated 99.5 per cent of trip requests.

• 'Just not acceptable': Advocates upset after DATS driver refuses to wait for disabled woman

Several people have spoken to city councillors at meetings in the past, describing delays in service.

ETS said DATS provided more than one million trips in 2019 andgot nearly 1,600 complaints.

DATS compared favourably in terms of complaints-per-trip ratio, ranking second lowest amongcomparable municipalities in Canada, the city said.

Nickel argued that his proposal could actually save the city and the province money by giving clients a viable alternative to DATS.

"I've got people calling me saying, 'Well, I couldn't make that specialist appointment and it was serious so guess what? I had to take an ambulance,' " Nickel said."That's the redundancy program. That's the backup program."

The preliminary work on the pilot would consider using some of the tax money the city collects from the vehicle-for-hire program, from companies such as Uber and Lyft.

• Mind the gap: Getting Edmontonians to transit hubs without local buses

Nickel said the DATS service will be overwhelmed when the bus network redesign comes online in the fall.

That model eliminates some community buses and will force people in neighbourhoods with low ridership to walk farther to the closest bus stop.

"We're gonna get jammed here and DATS their measurements, their time and response time and so on is going to tank," Nickel said. "This is to relieve some of the pressure on DATS."

City administration is scheduled to update council this summer on a three-year plan to improve the flexibility and responsiveness of DATS service.

• DATS needs $2.25 million to improve bus service, Edmonton councillors told
• Edmonton to roll out revamped bus network by next summer

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