News

TAKE ME FOR A RIDE: Service for the disabled at issue

Would-be Ipswich resident wants expanded van service

By Steve Landwehr
STAFF WRITER
Published: July 13, 2009

BEVERLY — Lois Gallo swears she's not a troublemaker. Really.

So in her nonconfrontational way, she recently met with Ipswich selectmen to see if they could help her.

Gallo has a form of muscular dystrophy, one of the most common inherited neurological disorders. It leaves her wheelchair-bound, but that's not really her problem. She'd like to move to Ipswich and live with her daughter, and that's where the bureaucratic cracks open up.

She's caught between a decision made many years ago and a recession that has left town officials scraping the bottom of the barrel to pay for existing services, never mind starting any new ones.

Gallo is a clinical social worker at the Cummings Center in Beverly, and she lives in Beverly, as well. So far, so good, because in Beverly she has the services of The Ride, the MBTA-sponsored transportation system for people unable to drive.

At $2 each way, it's affordable, and as long as you don't mind riding with others, it's reasonably convenient and efficient.

"The Ride is wonderful," Gallo, 72, said. "The drivers are all friendly, they'll take you anywhere you want to go."

But The Ride ends in Wenham, miles from Ipswich. And Ipswich has no comparable service.

Like most senior centers, the one in Ipswich's Town Hall offers van service, but for the most part it stays within the town's borders.

With The Ride, Gallo can go to the mall, or even catch a movie.

"They're not comparable at all," Gallo said of the two services, when asked by Pat McNally, chairman of the Ipswich selectmen.

State Rep. Brad Hill, R-Ipswich, said local communities, many years ago, were given the choice of joining a regional transit authority or going with the MBTA. For reasons that aren't clear today, Ipswich officials elected to become part of the Cape Ann Transit Authority.

Lydia Rivera, a spokeswoman for the MBTA, said federal law requires the T to provide transportation for the handicapped who live in cities or towns within three-quarters of a mile of an established bus route. So Wenham, Middleton and Topsfield get The Ride. Ipswich doesn't.

Rivera went on to say that the 15 or so other communities in the area that formed regional transit authorities have to meet the same legal requirements as the T. The Cape Ann Transportation Authority, however, doesn't provide bus service in Ipswich.

Hill argues that since the Legislature several years ago dedicated 1 cent of the sales tax to future funding for the MBTA, Ipswich and every other community in the state is already paying for its services.

But so far, Ipswich residents are still left without The Ride.

Gallo, who serves on the board of directors of the Independent Living Center of the North Shore and Cape Ann, says improving public transportation would benefit not only handicapped people, but the elderly who either can't drive or no longer want to — a growing segment of the population.

She says she's been working on this problem for quite a while and plans to continue. Without badgering, of course.

"I don't want to come across as adversarial at all," she says.