Dear Editor,
I was pleased to see on the Township council agenda for Feb. 26, a motion supporting the Disability Alliance of BC ‘Save our HandyDART!’ campaign to implore TransLink to fulfill its duties and responsibilities to provide equitable and quality transit to those that rely on HandyDART.
TransLink is increasingly replacing this critical service with under-trained taxis that don’t provide the same door-to-door service as HandyDART. I am happy a majority of council, including Mayor Woodward and Councillors Baillie, Rindt, vanPopta, Kunst, Pratt, and Ferguson supported it, and I applaud them for doing so.
I was incredibly dismayed that Councillors Barbara Martens and Kim Richter so loudly opposed it. It is distressing that neither took the time to get educated on the matter before speaking on the motion. If I, a member of the public, can access the agenda days in advance, surely they can, too? Do they always attend meetings before researching items on the agenda? Apparently those of us who are disabled need to come to a council meeting to prove that we are worthy of these two councillors’ support. Or do we need to prove to TransLink that they can afford to serve us? Apparently the budgets of TransLink are more important than serving disabled Langley residents.
Kate Bernstein, Walnut Grove
.
• READ MORE: SkyTrain sticks with geographical place names for Surrey-Langley line stations
• READ MORE: Transit museum history now stored in Langley
.