Rally to save No-Fare Pass held outside RIPTA headquarters
PROVIDENCE— A rally to save the No-Fare Pass was held Monday outside the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority’s (RIPTA) headquarters in Providence where more than 75 advocates urged the RIPTA Board of Directors and Gov. Gina Raimondo not to eliminate no fare bus passes for low-income elderly and the disabled on Jan. 1.
Organizing Monday’s rally was the Coalition to Preserve No-Fare Bus Passes, which includes representatives of the Senior Agenda Coalition of Rhode Island, Rhode Island Organizing Project, Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless, Rhode Island Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty, RIPTA Riders Alliance, and the Mental Health Recovery Coalition of Rhode Island.
“This will be a very unhappy New Year’s Day indeed for 13,000 low-income
disabled persons and seniors who rely on this service,” said William F. Flynn, Jr., executive director of the Senior Agenda Coalition of Rhode Island.
Flynn said these riders, most of whom have incomes below the poverty level, are completely dependent on this service to access food shopping, prescriptions, social services including food pantries, recovery support groups, senior centers and other programs.
“These activities are absolutely essential to preventing them from becoming completely isolated,” he said. “It’s well-established that social isolation leads to poorer health and shorter lives.”
At the rally no-fare users told how they make as many as 40 round trips per month and cannot afford to pay one dollar for each round trip (the new fare that would be imposed). Marjorie Waters from the Rhode Island Organizing Project said her group had met with hundreds of seniors and persons with disabilities many of whom said they couldn’t afford to pay the fare. A spokeswoman for the Homelessness Outreach Project said many homeless people have no money and rely on these passes just to get to shelters and meal sites. She said that without the passes many more people would be driven to panhandling.
Waters said its member groups had already generated over 1,000 postcards and hundreds of phone calls to Raimondo’s office asking her to provide a plan to permanently fund no-fare passes for those who need them. She noted that six months ago Governor Raimondo pledged to seek new funds from state agencies’ budgets to fund no-fare trips, but no funding has been committed.
Emily Jones from the RI Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty said that several of their member churches are circulating additional postcards and making phone calls.
Immediately following the rally many no-fare pass users spoke directly to the RIPTA Board at its monthly meeting and urged them not to eliminate the passes on December 31. Following the testimony, the RIPTA Board voted to postpone eliminating the passes until Feb. 1.
The Coalition to Preserve No-Fare Bus Passes is vowing to continue its advocacy campaign to find a permanent funding mechanism to pre- serve the service.
In 2015 RIPTA originally proposed to eliminate no-fare bus passes for low-income seniors and disabled persons, requiring them to pay a half-fare of $1 or each one-way trip. At Raimondo’s request, RIPTA voted n October of that year to reduce the fare to 50 cents per one-way trip and delay implementing the fare until July 1, 2016. Prior to that date Raimondo and the General Assembly included an additional $900,000 in funding for RIPTA in the Fiscal Year 2017 state budget, effective July 1, 2016. The budget article also delayed implementing the 50 cent pass until 2017.
According to Walsh, the number of people affected would include 9,176 lowincome disabled persons and 3,798 low-income seniors who rely on no-fare passes for their mobility and access to vital services and everyday needs such as food shopping.
Walsh says seniors average 31 one-way trips per month, and disabled persons average 39 trips per month. These rides account for 22 percent of all peak time rides and 31 of off-peak time rides.
“RIPTA estimated that 40 percent of current no-fare customers could not afford to pay for half-fare passes, but this is an estimate and the impact could be even worse,” Flynn says. “The result would be that 3,670 lowincome disabled persons and 1,519 low-income seniors would become increasingly isolated. Isolation is a social determinant of health and longevity. It will also increase chances of seniors and disabled persons requiring long-term residential care and will increase state Medicaid spending.”
Walsh says RIPTA’s proposal will harm some of Rhode Island’s most vulnerable persons, and that these users rely on bus transit for basic needs like getting to work, food shopping and picking up prescriptions.
“The No-Fare Bus Program is a valuable support for many of our most vulnerable and poor people and it deserves to be continued,” he said.