Aurora – A driver and dispatcher for RTD’s service for disabled people have been disciplined for an incident last week in which a man in a wheelchair and his wife were dropped off in a parking lot instead of being driven home.
“We are very concerned about the situation, and that is why we are going through the requirements for the additional retraining to make sure that nothing like this happens again,” said Scott Reed, Regional Transportation District spokesman.
Names of the Access-A-Ride driver and dispatcher weren’t released.
The complaint came from the coup le’s son-in-law, Sanjay Tripathi, who said his 72-year-old father-in-law, Devendra Sharma, and his 66-year-old mother-in-law, Priamvada Sharma, were forced to return in the dark to the Spalding Rehabilitation Hospital after the ride was aborted. His father-in-law is in a wheelchair because of a stroke.
Tripathi said his in-laws, who are from India, asked the driver to let them out of the van after he had stopped in a parking lot behind a building for at least 15 minutes. The couple expected the driver was going to return them to Tripathi’s home, he said.
“The driver left them behind the building,” Tripathi said. “She had to push him up to the rehab center, a half-block. That driver completely disappeared. Didn’t call his dispatch or us. It is very strange.”
Officials from Spalding also called RTD to complain.
“If their story is what they say, we’ve got to fix the problem,” said Cindy Kreutz, chief executive for Spalding. “I just can’t imagine something like that would happen. I’d like to believe it didn’t happen the way it happened, but I’m afraid it did.”
Reed said RTD officials contacted the contractor that provides the Access-A-Ride service, MV Transportation, whose officials have agreed to retrain their employees on operations procedures. The contractor that provides dispatch services, First Transit, also will retrain.
If clients ask to get out of the van, drivers must contact dispatchers for direction and to possibly arrange another ride.
“At that point in time, the driver should have communicated that there was a change requested by the clients,” Reed said. “The dispatcher should have told the driver what to do. If that driver wasn’t able to fulfill that request, another vehicle should have been provided.”
Tripathi said he has been contacted by RTD officials who told him they are investigating his complaint. “My main goal,” Tripathi said, “is to solve this issue so it doesn’t happen again.”
Staff writer Jeremy P. Meyer may be reached at 303-820-1175 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.
