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RIDE driver takes passenger with cerebral palsy on hours-long detour; dispatcher advises he call 911
Malden resident James Norris says a driver with The RIDE repeatedly refused to take him home, even ignoring a dispatcher's orders.
A passenger of the MBTA’s The RIDE says a dispatcher suggested he call 911 after a driver turned a routine trip into an hours-long ordeal, repeatedly refusing to take him home.
Malden resident James Norris, 37, has cerebral palsy and uses The RIDE — a paratransit service for people with disabilities — to get around.
“I’ve been taking The RIDE for a long time, and I’ve had many different unpleasant scenarios, but nothing like this,” he told Boston.com in an interview.
On April 12, Norris arranged to use The RIDE to get to a Malden Rotary Club meeting in nearby Wakefield. The van was supposed to pick him up around 5 p.m. but showed up nearly two hours later.
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There was already another passenger onboard, and Norris said the driver assured him they would stop in Wakefield first. Within a few minutes, however, the driver changed course and said he was going to Lynn to drop off the other passenger.
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By the time they were back on course to Wakefield, it was around 7:30 p.m. and Norris knew he was going to miss his meeting.
“I said, ‘You know what, I don’t think we’re going to make it. We need to turn back and go back to Malden,’” Norris said of his ordeal, which was first reported by WCVB. “And he says, ‘No, that’s not the protocol; that’s not how we do it.’”
Norris reached a RIDE dispatcher after sitting on hold for 25 minutes, turning on speakerphone so the driver could hear. According to Norris, the dispatcher told the driver twice to turn back to Malden. Both times, the driver declined.
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“Dispatch then told me, ‘You know what, this driver will be written up, but there’s nothing else we can do, so if you feel the need, please feel free to call the police,’” Norris recalled.
With the driver refusing to budge and Norris’s phone battery dwindling, “I started to get butterflies in my stomach, kind of thinking, ‘What is this guy going to do?’” he said. “I honestly didn’t know what was going to happen.”
He said he considered calling 911, but at that point the van was close enough to the Wakefield destination that he decided to get off and wait for his previously scheduled ride home.
The RIDE never showed; Norris said a dispatcher informed him that the driver who had refused to take him home had also cancelled his return trip. He finally made it home via Uber.
The MBTA reached out to him on Saturday with an apology, he said.
In a statement, the MBTA offered “its sincere apologies to the RIDE customer for his troubling experience,” assuring that a full investigation into the incident is underway.
That investigation “will include interviews with the driver and the RIDE dispatcher,” and the driver has been removed from service in the meantime, according to the MBTA. The T also said it will inform Norris of its findings.
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Norris, who founded the nonprofit Handi Capable Fitness, said he hopes the T will use his experience as an opportunity to take meaningful action. He noted that other passengers have also dealt with unreliable service; in 2021, for example, 14% of The RIDE’s trips were either late or no-shows, WCVB reported last year.
“Something needs to change, and my fear is what’s going to happen is this is going to run through the news cycle for about a week, and then chances are it’s going to be lost in the shuffle and nothing is going to happen,” Norris said. “This is a perfect opportunity to come to the table, have a conversation about how they can better serve their passengers.”
He emphasized that he’s encountered many RIDE drivers who do their jobs well and are committed to the passengers who rely on them.
“But there are a few bad apples, and unfortunately, this guy was one of them,” Norris said.
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