New Westminster senior, Phillip laMarche is a happy-go-lucky guy who always has a joke to tell and doesn’t often complain, but he is complaining now.
LaMarche, 86, is afraid he is going to be seriously injured because there isn’t a wheelchair friendly bus stop that heads to the city’s core near his home.
He lives in a seniors residence close to the stops for the 128 bus that are kitty-corner to each other at 6th Street and 8th Avenue.
He wants the city to fix the stops.
Buses have occasionally stopped to pick him up or drop him off at these stops, particularly if the weather is bad, but usually they don’t.
“And those are very popular corners,” he said.
“The last [driver] wouldn’t let me off because he said he wasn’t allowed to and he would get into a lot of trouble if he did.”
When the buses don’t stop laMarche has to travel several blocks further, which he said puts him at risk of tipping over his electric wheelchair. Something that did happen once, but luckily that time he fell into grass and wasn’t badly hurt.
Even if he is not injured, laMarche said having to go the extra blocks is very inconvenient, especially if it is raining. His electric chair doesn’t work well in the rain so if he has to travel further on a rainy day the chair will sometimes just stop.
LaMarche has been in a wheelchair since 2012 when he his left leg was amputated due to an infection. His right leg also has serious circulation issues.
Even with his physical challenges, laMarche gets out often on transit. He goes to Vancouver every Sunday to play the organ for his church and he never has any trouble, because the stops he needs are all wheelchair accessible.
The fact that there isn’t access on a much-used New Westminster route, for anyone who is disabled or injured, angers laMarche.
“It is unjust,” he said.
According to TransLink, bus stop and sidewalk infrastructure is the responsibility of the city.
“TransLink has a program to share the cost of improvements to stops with municipalities to improve accessibility and we would be pleased to work with the city if they make a request,” TransLink’s Jeff Busby told The Record in an email.
Busby said so far, TransLink had not heard from the city about these two stops.
Eugene Wat, New Westminster’s manager of infrastructure planning said the bus stops in question have been flagged as needing accessibility improvements. According to Wat, the westbound stop, in front of the Thornebridge seniors’ home, is a straightforward fix and is scheduled to be adapted this year.
But, the eastbound stop, in front of Ihop is more complicated to fix because the back of the sidewalk is Ihop property.
“[TransLink] wants to have a pull-in bay created so that the bus can pull into a bay as opposed to stopping directly on the eastbound travel lane. So, in order to create a bay we need to move things back more so that is where we run into some challenges with the existing right away of the roadway and we may have to deal with acquiring extra land and things like that,” he said.
He said the fix will involve putting in a retaining wall and new curbs and working around an existing power pole.
“We need to make sure it is workable,” he said, but added it is something the engineering department is looking into.
LaMarche said the city also told him they were working on the issue, but that was months ago.
“It has been a long time,” he said.
