Blog

Posted 10/27/11 by Common Good

Philip K. Howard in the Daily News

In today’s New York Daily News, Common Good Chair Philip K. Howard comments on a recent lawsuit which is trying to force New York City to make its entire taxicab fleet wheelchair-accessible—which would add $935 million in operating cost every five years.

Wheelchair-bound people, Howard argues, deserve enhanced access to transportation. But at what cost? City transit already spends more than $500 million every year on accessibility. If this lawsuit succeeds, Howard calculates that the cost of each ride for a wheelchair-bound patron would come to at least $2,000—and possibly as much as $63,000! And what about all the other public good that money could fund?

Reducing pollution, funding pre-K education, repaying public debt, providing health care, you name it.

No one is asking the question. In the 1990s, under the same laws and guided by the same logic, advocates for the disabled killed a plan to install public toilets in New York because it was not practical to make the toilets wheelchair accessible. What matters to them is equality, not practicality. Give me my rights!

Society and government have the moral responsibility to use public money for the common good. As Howard writes: “Every public dollar involves a moral choice, a tradeoff with other needs.” Responsible spending means deciding when the tradeoff is justified—and when a $2,000 cab ride is just too much.