At work today I happened to catch a headline on the front page of a small local paper the Saanich News. It read:

Strolls Cramping Wheelchairs

&

Strollers Push Wheelchair to Curb

I dropped everything I was doing and took a minute to read the short article. It wasn’t much, just 10 or so paragraphs but the potential implications of the article go way beyond those 10 poorly written (in my humble opinion) paragraphs. The article either naively or recklessly, pits parents (mostly mothers) against the disabled in a war for priority seating on public transit buses.

The opening of the article details an altercation on a public transit bus in which a disabled person was asked to wait for the next bus because “the priority seating was full, taken up by parents with strollers”. An over zealous passenger, who describes himself as disabled but not in a wheelchair, was affronted by this situation and took it upon himself to enter into a verbal sparing match with the driver which escalated and led to the man sitting on the bumper of the bus refusing to move until – I am speculating regarding his demands as he never specified them  – the parents with strollers relinquished their spots allowing the disabled person to board the bus.

The police were called and the man was ticketed for disrupting bus travel. I have no idea what ended up happening to the passengers of the bus including the disabled person or the parent(s) with the stroller(s) but the over zealous man (who was given a distinct voice in the article) still asserts (even after the ticket was upheld in provincial traffic court) that his actions were warranted.

His exact quote was “if you keep pushing the disabled out, they stay inside and the suicide rate goes up. It all comes down to human rights”. And he is right it is all about human rights. Let me stress this HUMAN RIGHTS. In other words the rights of all humans which by the way includes infants and small children.

I am not going to bash disabled people, I am not going to negatively comment on the woman from the Action Committee of People with Disabilities who thinks that “bus drivers need to be doing their jobs” and request that parents fold their strollers and move. No, I won’t do these things because the issue here is not one that requires a strollers vs. wheelchairs scenario. The issue here is one about compassion, respect, empathy and an obvious shortage of accessible seating on public transit.

I have no idea what it is like to have a disability and be relegated to a wheelchair or a scooter. I imagine it must be challenging and marginalizing and I know peoples with disabilities are more prone to depression and other mental health issues. I wouldn’t dare compare motherhood to being disabled, but as a mother of two young children with a third on the way, I can say that at times, being a mother can feel very similar. I have felt marginalized, burdened, isolated and depressed and have craved access to the outside world that often feels inaccessible with a small child and baby.

I have ridden the bus with my children before and I know how it feels. People look at you like you are taking up too much space and time. In my experience, the bus drivers don’t help you to secure the stroller and they usually start moving again before you have even sat down and engaged the stroller’s brake.

This exact thing happened on one of my few bus rides and led to an unfortunate incident where my entire stroller pitched forward, almost dumping my 2YO out of it, luckily I was able to grab his stroller before he was harmed; all this took place while I had my other child, then a newborn baby, strapped to my chest in a carrier and my fully loaded diaper bag slung over my arm. Nobody helped me, nobody asked me if we were ok. Needless to say, it was one of the last trips I took on public transit with my stroller and my children.

I am privileged enough to own a car and I choose to use that car rather than endure the hassle of riding public transit with my children and my stroller. However, many parents don’t have that luxury, and like many disabled people, must depend on the bus as their sole mode of transportation.

To assume that a parent should collapse a stroller and move to another area of the bus is an entirely ridiculous notion. Expecting a parent to fold down a stroller that is fully loaded with a days worth of paraphernalia and juggle their babe in their arms and move to another spot on the bus is not just preposterous, it is simply dangerous and likely impossible.

Furthermore, a baby is a person too. A person who like a disabled person, is unable to move around unassisted. A wheelchair or scooter is an important mode of transportation for a disabled person and so is a stroller for a small child or infant. Who is to say that an adult disabled person is any more entitled than a sleeping newborn in a stroller.

But that is not the point. The point is that often times with public transportation, the demand far exceeds the supply. Everyone, including able bodied people, parents with strollers and disabled people alike will from time to time, be left behind because there is a lack of space. In a perfect world those that have the ability to relinquish their spots for those less enabled should. But, we don’t live in a perfect world and sometimes people are are just simply dicks and they watch as other less fortunate than them suffer and it sucks.

This article could have been very effective, it could have given a fair and equal voice to both groups of people and it could have targeted the true issue at hand which is that there is not enough accessible, priority seating on public transit buses. It didn’t have to pit two groups of people against one another creating needless anger and tension.

I encourage parents and disabled people in the City of Victoria to direct your attention at the true cause of the problem and petition BC Transit to expand on the availability of accessible, priority seating at peak hours on peak routes. No one needs to sit on bumpers, the police don’t need to be called and people don’t need to be left out in the rain. Use your frustrations and channel them in an effective way in the right forum; have some compassion and understanding and above all remember: none of us want to see what would really happen in a throw-down of strollers vs. wheelchairs. BTW – My money would be on the Mommies cause hormones are dangerous sh*t and you don’t want to mess with them.

Have you ever had a terrible experience on a transit bus as a parent or disabled person?

Do you think the article fairly depicted the situation and the problem?

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