It was 7:45 a.m. when a driver for Fayetteville’s paratransit service, FASTTrac!, tried to drop Alvin Ricks and a friend at a doctor’s appointment. It was over an hour before Alvin’s appointment. The doctor’s office wasn’t even open.
Alvin didn’t move from her seat in the van. She wasn’t going to stand outside until the building opened.
“I said [to my friend], ‘I’m gonna ride with this driver until the driver brings me back for my appointment,’” Alvin recalled. “Driver says, ‘Well, I can’t get you back to your appointment on time.’ I said, ‘That’s your problem. I’m not getting off this van. I’m sorry.’”
Alvin has navigated Cumberland County with a visual impairment for almost two decades. She is completely blind, with no light perception. She said her time living in the county hasn’t felt like a full life.
Poor transportation is partially to blame, said Terri Thomas, director of the Vision Resource Center, a Cumberland County organization serving the visually impaired since 1936.
Transportation and isolation
Transportation is one of the largest barriers for people with visual impairments or blindness in Cumberland County, Terri explained. Ride-share services like Uber and Lyft can be costly and wait times can be long.
Like Alvin, most residents with visual impairments or blindness use FASTTrac!. It’s available daily and provides origin-to-destination service by phone reservation. Customers pay $2 for a one-way trip or can purchase multiple pass packages starting at $17.50 for 10 passes.
Alvin was not the only resident who dealt with an early drop-off by FASTTrac! A 2016 Americans with Disabilities Act compliance review of the service found a “substantial” number of “untimely drop-offs for trips with requested appointment times,” including “late and very early drop-offs.” It also found that FASTTrac! had “substantial numbers of significantly untimely pickups.”
FASTTrac! customers negotiate their pick-up and drop-off times when they reserve a ride, explained Loren Bymer, director of marketing and
communications for the City of Fayetteville.
“Daily cancellations, weather, traffic, etc., all impact the timeliness of
customer arrivals and departures,” he said.
Besides pick-up and drop-off timing, Terri said FASTTrac! hours limit what a resident with a visual impairment can independently do in the community. FASTTrac! stops running at 7 p.m. daily.
“If they [residents with a visual impairment] did want to go have a dinner or drink or just to go out, they can’t,” she said.
Isolation is a major concern for the visually impaired. A study funded by the London-based visual impairment advocacy organization Fight for Sight found that people with visual impairments were three times more likely to feel lonely than the general population. One reason was inaccessible transportation, which limits people with visual impairments’ ability to engage with the world.
Terri said socialization is a largely ignored need for residents with visual impairments. Preventing loneliness and isolation is a big reason why the Vision Resource Center plans and hosts events like bingo, art and exercise classes, a Thanksgiving meal, a party at a winery, and more. The center also hosted a winter wonderland-themed gala for its members, donors, and the broader community in December to celebrate its 85th anniversary.
“A lot of the time people say, ‘Oh, Terri, you’re just taking people out and y’all having fun,’” she said. “It’s deeper than the fun piece.”
Helping residents with visual impairments get out of the house has another positive impact: making the community more aware of residents with visual impairments. Thomas Bass, a part-time social worker for the blind with the Vision Resource Center, started holding the center’s walking group at Cross Creek Mall so that residents without visual impairments are more familiar with those who have them.
As a resident who has a visual impairment with some light perception, Thomas has also helped many residents feel comfortable getting out into the community independently.
“It’s just trying to figure out how to educate the community,” Terri said.
Sidewalks: an issue for all
Navigating Fayetteville on foot is difficult for residents with and without visual impairments. In a YouTube video posted last year, content creator Sam Reid highlighted the city’s title as America’s least walkable city by walking over 16.5 miles with his friend and Fayetteville resident Preston Griffin. Together, they documented gaps in sidewalks and the city’s lack of crosswalks along their almost nine-hour trek.
Alvin said she often doesn’t know which intersections have lights to help her cross. The gaps in the sidewalk can also be dangerous. Unpaved surfaces offer nothing to help people with visual impairments redirect themselves, Alvin explained.
“Once you hit dirt or grass, you have no markers,” she said.
The gaps in the sidewalk stem from development requirements. City ordinances require new development on public-facing streets to build sidewalks along their property, save for a handful of exceptions. Developers are not required to connect their stretches of sidewalk to others. Some properties were also developed before the ordinance was in place.
The city sidewalks that do exist can be difficult to navigate. In 2021, the city released a self-evaluation to determine compliance with ADA requirements. The evaluation found that “additional efforts are needed to explore ADA compliance” for pedestrian facilities like crosswalks and bus stops.
The city has already installed over 100,000 linear feet of sidewalks with ADA-compliant ramps. It also updated 125 ramps to ADA compliance. And it is broadly improving its pedestrian infrastructure by updating its Pedestrian Plan.
“The city recognizes that ADA compliance is an ongoing responsibility, which requires monitoring to identify current and future accessibility issues,” Loren said.
Residents can submit a request for something to be made ADA-compliant if they believe it to be out of compliance through the FayFixIt app or on the city’s website.
Improving transportation accessibility, pedestrian infrastructure, and the community’s awareness of the challenges experienced by residents with visual impairments is one of the mantles Terri is taking on this year.
“The squeaky wheel gets the oil,” Terri said. “Without the push, it is not going to change. That’s what we’re going to do in 2025. We’re going to make people aware.”
In the meantime, the center’s Visionary Group will continue to advocate for residents with visual impairments and blindness at city and county meetings. They’ll start producing a podcast called “Turn the Lights On” on their radio station. They’ll make themselves squeaky.
Read CityView magazine’s “New Year New You” January 2025 e-edition here.