629: Expect Delays

Ira Glass

A couple months ago, I got into a plane in San Diego. It was an overnight flight on JetBlue. And like everybody on the plane, I was anxious to get to sleep, right? And some people sat down and closed their eyes. And up at the front of the plane, a member of the crew kind of leaned on the bulkhead like a loiterer leaning on a lamppost and got on the PA.

Ira Glass

This recording was actually made by one of my coworkers, Lilly Sullivan, a few weeks later. She was on the same exact flight, and the same crew member gave the same speech, and Lilly recorded it. But really, what gets said is almost word for word the same as I heard.

Ira Glass

The night I was there, everybody was like, what is this? Like, was that a joke? Was she just mocking another airline, American Airlines? We were like drowsy kittens waking up to the fact that, oh, something was going on.

Ira Glass

OK. She's not the greatest comedian, but there was something about her swagger, like her sheer joy in what she was doing, that transcended the actual material she was putting out. And I swear the whole plane was with her. Lilly says this happened on her flight, too. Nobody normally wants to listen to a pilot's speech, but she had the element of surprise. It was just not a normal speech.

At one point-- I think it's the thing you're about to hear-- I turned to the stranger sitting next to me and asked, is she drunk?

Ira Glass

"The personality to be a pilot," is how I think she worded it the night I saw her.

Air travel is this very orderly, intentionally ritualized, and impersonal kind of corporate experience. But she was just the opposite of corporate. She was like a person. And so I tracked her down to ask how did this happen, exactly. Like, what was she trying to do?

Well, her name is Anne Aldrich, and her answer to the question what are you trying to do could not be more straightforward.

Ira Glass

Oh. When Anne says "the back," what she's referring to is the place that you and I call the airplane-- the part we sit in.

Ira Glass

These days, nationally, about 5% of commercial airline pilots are women, according to the Air Line Pilots Association. Anne flew for 10 years for TWA until it was bought out by American, where she was till layoffs after 9/11. She's been with JetBlue the past 15 years. When she's not flying, she runs a nonprofit animal rescue shelter that she created in Phoenix, where she lives.

I hadn't seen many pilots actually come into the cabin to talk to the passengers at the beginning of a flight. But Anne says that, when she started at JetBlue in the airline's early days, they encouraged pilots to do it.

Ira Glass

But in imitating that pilot, and trying to be funny like he was, she started to express this part of herself that was not like what you usually hear. For instance, in her preflight spiel, she tells this one story about how when she was a kid in 1970, back when the number of female airline pilots in the United States was exactly zero-- there were none at all-- she told her first grade teacher she wanted to grow up to be an airline pilot.

Ira Glass

I asked her about all the cracks that she makes against American Airlines and she said she really has nothing against American Airlines at all. The jokes just play better if you name a specific airline. And she said it's not true that American Airlines told her she didn't have the personality to be a pilot.

Ira Glass

But my favorite part of Anne's on-board stand-up routine-- the most remarkable and, I think, most idiosyncratic part of it-- is this. In this setting, where everybody seems so stressed out and not so happy at all-- I mean, that is what so much of travel is; hauling from place to place, waiting on line, worrying about all the things that can delay you and go wrong-- Anne unleashes, in this very pure way, her total enthusiasm for flying and just the incredible fact that we fly.

Ira Glass

She still flies gliders in an old crop duster where her hair blows in the wind. But what she loves most about flying is when it takes real skill, where she really has to plan around weather, where she has to plan tricky descents.

Ira Glass

Whatever that is. Or flying into Chicago O'Hare, which is so, so busy.

Ira Glass

Most people on her flight seem stressed out when they get on the plane, Anne says.

Well, today on our radio show, we have stories for things that happen in transit that create that stress. We have people traveling from spot to spot, being stopped, being ticketed, being delayed in unusually dramatic ways here and on the other side of the world. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass.

Ira Glass

Tray tables up. Chairs in the upright position, everybody. And stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, The Most Expected Delay in Northern Ohio.

So we heard about this tiny stretch of roadway in Ohio. It's kind of infamous in the area. Many, many people have been delayed there over the years, or maybe waylaid is a better word for it. They've certainly paid the price for going there. Our producer Sean Cole explains.

Sean Cole

This stretch of road is on Interstate 71 just outside Cleveland. It's about 400 yards long, 1,200 or so feet, take less than half a minute to drive it. And it happens to run through the municipal limits of an itty bitty village known as Linndale. And here's the thing everybody knows about Linndale. If you drive down this little stretch of road and you're speeding, the Linndale police will pull you over and give you a ticket. For decades, it's been the most aggressively policed 440-yard stretch of Interstate 71 around. And you have to pass through it to get from the airport to downtown Cleveland, so tourists on their way to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or whatever get pulled over. And if you ask people who live in the Cleveland area, Linndale is basically a speed trap masquerading as a town.

Sean Cole

We first heard about Linndale from Mark Gardner, a criminal defense attorney who's represented people in court who've gotten tickets in Linndale. He, himself, has never gotten a ticket on that stretch of road. Says he knows better.

Sean Cole

But the reason Mark first told us about Linndale isn't just that they hand out a lot of tickets. It's because of this epic, still-ongoing battle that's developed over the past two decades between Linndale and the Ohio State Legislature, a petty political tit-for-tat that, if it were about something more high stakes-- like health care, nuclear weapons, or something-- would be horrifying. But since it's about speeding tickets, it plays as comedy rather than tragedy.

See, according to the 2010 census, Linndale is a village of 179 people. It's got 35 houses in it, 11 businesses. In some years, it's brought in almost $1 million in speeding violations on the freeway. Again, that's 35 houses, nearly $1 million in speeding tickets-- the vast majority of its budget. It's a municipality that, arguably, wouldn't exist, wouldn't have a budget, or barely any money at all, if not for speeding tickets. And the Ohio Legislature basically treats Linndale as a parasite, living off the lead-footedness of northern Ohioans. So the players are a town that has eight streets in it and a powerful body of lawmakers who thinks its laws are being enforced not wisely and too well.

But the story actually starts before Interstate 71 was even built.

Sean Cole

Mike Toczek was the mayor of Linndale back in the late '80s and early '90s. After that, he became clerk of Linndale's Mayor's Court, which is just a local town court that handles traffic violations and other low-level offenses. He's 68 and has lived in Linndale most of his life. And the way he describes it-- and it seems to be true-- Linndale has always been a town on the hustle. He remembers back when it was a den of illegal gambling houses. Says he used to like watching all the gamblers jump into their cars and zoom away minutes before the sheriff arrived for a raid. Linndale was also a place, at one point, you could buy fireworks, which were illegal in Cleveland. And when Mike was a kid, the village had more than twice the residents it has now.

Sean Cole

It's tempting to think that the village started ticketing people on the freeway out of revenge, to consciously be a burr in the ass-phalt. But Mike says it was more just an opportunity. Linndale doesn't even have access to 71. There's no off-ramp that leads to the village. Nonetheless, a 1967 article in the Cleveland Press called the freeway Bonanza Boulevard for Linndale.

There's this scene where the mayor at the time, who looked like Paulie from Goodfellas, keeps ringing up $28 speeding citations in the Mayor's Court. He has this real f-you, pay-me attitude about it when people complain. And he throws up his hands at the assertion that Linndale only tickets people for quick cash, saying the village is bound by the state to patrol 71-- which, we called the Ohio Department of Transportation-- it doesn't seem to be true. That mayor later went to prison on gambling and bribery charges. Mike Toczek took over as mayor of Linndale in 1985.

Sean Cole

But as this is America, there are enough of us just speeding to make a good living off of. And then, in 1994, this curious piece of legislation started working its way through the Ohio House and Senate. It had to do with local police departments handing out traffic violations on the freeway. Among other things, the bill said local police can't hand out speeding tickets on I-71 if fewer than 880 yards of the freeway actually goes through their town, which is twice the yardage that went through Linndale. And local police can't hand out tickets on the freeway if their town doesn't have access to the freeway. Also, it said your town can't begin with L and rhyme with Shwinndale

OK, it didn't say that. But it may as well have. This is Mark Gardner again, the lawyer who first told us about Linndale.

Sean Cole

Luckily, I do have proof of that. Allow me to introduce former Ohio State Representative Ed Kasputis, the guy who first drafted the legislation.

Sean Cole

The office space in question was in Cleveland. That's where he practiced law. And one day around the water cooler-- again, this is 1994-- this guy working for the printing company says--

Sean Cole

So Ed puts on his disguise, which according to him is a pair of blue jeans, and drives to Linndale's Village Hall on the one day a week everybody goes to contest their tickets or just to pay them. And he sees what looks like officials handing a phone to one defendant after another. The story seemed to check out. Except for one part.

Sean Cole

That is, Linndale was mostly ticketing non-Linndalers. In fact, Linndale is not in Ed Kasputis' district, and as he started writing the legislation, it came out that he, himself, had gotten a ticket in Linndale and just paid it without even ever looking at it. And the other thing that really galled him was the fact that there was no ramp in Linndale to and from the highway, that Linndale police had to drive out of Linndale, through part of Cleveland, and then work their way back to that little infamous patch on 71.

Sean Cole

That's what Ed calls the freeway. The Serengeti. Speeders are gazelles.

Sean Cole

Again, it's 400 yards. And the Burger King closed down a long time ago. Anyway, Ed's bill passed. It became against the law for the village to enforce the law on I-71-- or at least the law against speeding. I asked Mike Toczek, the former mayor, what he thought when he heard about the bill.

Sean Cole

Before, it was the gambling. Now it was handing out too many speeding tickets. He says people used to approach him-- reporters like me-- and say, what are you guys doing in business with this ticket racket?

Sean Cole

That's Linndale's position in this whole battle in a nutshell. You don't like it, then just follow the rules. We don't set the speed limit. All we're doing is enforcing the rules imposed by the state. And the state's position is, no. You're abusing the rules we made for your personal enrichment. We don't like the way you're enforcing them. And we can do something about it.

Again, former State Rep Ed Kasputis.

Sean Cole

In other words, Linndale sued-- together with another community that was similar-- for their right to ticket people on their stretch of roadway. The argument was that Ed Kasputis' bill violated the Ohio State Constitution, which says that cities and villages can govern themselves as long as their local regulations don't conflict with state law. The appeal process lasted about five years, during which time, Linndale was allowed to keep pulling people over on 71. Finally, in 1999, the Ohio State Supreme Court ruled in Linndale's favor. Round 1-- Linndale.

Fast forward about 10 years when another state legislator got, according to Linndalers, a burr in his ass about the village, although, he wouldn't describe it that way. His name's Tom Patton. He used to be a senator. Now he's in the House. And he approached the Linndale problem from another direction. And what he did was pretty ingenious.

Sean Cole

At that time, Linndale was reported to have 117 residents. It's ingenious because that little local village court in Linndale is how the village was able to keep all the money it generated from the tickets. Whatever court a speeding case is heard in, the fines and other costs stay in that court. Without its Mayor's Court, all the fines would be processed somewhere else, and Linndale would only get a fraction or nothing at all. It was, essentially, rerouting the plumbing through which all the ticket money flowed.

Now, Tom Patton, like Ed Kasputis before him, claims his bill wasn't solely about Linndale. He says he's against Mayor's Courts in general. But then, after he wrote his bill saying that, if your village has fewer than 150 people, you can't have a Mayor's Court, the census came out saying that Linndale didn't have 117 residents. It had 179 residents.

Sean Cole

The bill passed in 2012 and Linndale police were still allowed to ticket on 71. They just weren't keeping as much of the proceeds now, with no Mayor's Court. I read one report that said, at this point, income from the tickets dropped to a little more than 1% of what it had been. Jobs went away, the court clerk for one. There's no court anymore.

Steve Pokrandt remembers those days pretty well. We talked on his back porch in Linndale. Sort of a tiki theme back there. Steve was the maintenance man for the village when the Mayor's Court went away.

Sean Cole

If you're wondering what Linndale was spending all its money on, here's a really basic breakdown. At this point, the total budget was about $1.2 million, with most of it from speeding tickets and a little from property and income taxes-- things like that. About 60% of that went to the security of persons and property, which mostly means the police department and a little bit to Cleveland Fire and EMS. The average for other villages in the county is 37%. Another quarter of Linndale's budget went to government salaries-- the mayor, treasurer, a teeny bit for the village counselors.

If you're keeping track, that's almost everything. Every other category is much less. Utility services-- that's trash pick-up and stuff-- was half of 1%. Again, this was all in the Mayor's Court days. The police expenses and government salaries have dropped a lot since then. Also, Linndale spent $100,000 appealing the law that Representative Patton wrote. And this time, they lost that appeal. So round 2-- the state of Ohio. And Tom Patton was the captain of that team.

Sean Cole

Representative Patton didn't simply want Linndale to stop ticketing people. He thinks the village shouldn't exist, that it should merge with Cleveland or with another suburb nearby. He actually doesn't think any village as small as Linndale should exist. And now he had driven the village one step closer to extinction.

But the village was only in the red for about six months, because right around this time, there was a change in administration. A new mayor, Ashlee McLaughlin. And she had an ingenious idea, too. The village council had already been discussing it. There's this one intersection in town by the police station. It's where Memphis Avenue meets Avenue of Peace. And Memphis Avenue is really well-trafficked. In fact, people go barreling down that street at speeds way above the 25 mile an hour limit. Mayor McLaughlin says the village wanted to enforce traffic laws there anyway. And they could do it in a way that they didn't even have to pull people over.

Sean Cole

Mayor McLaughlin had two speed-limit cameras installed on that corner-- one on each side of the road. These things are all over the place now. You've seen them. If you're speeding, they take a picture of your car and send you a ticket in the mail within a month. And most importantly, it's a civil infraction, not a criminal one, so it doesn't have to be processed through a court.

Sean Cole

These two cameras are set to go off if you're driving 11 miles an hour or more over the limit. And so many cars go that fast on Memphis Avenue that Linndale is pulling in more money from the cameras than it did on the highway. Mayor McLaughlin also told me that there used to be four accidents a year at that corner, but since the cameras went up in 2013, there have been zero.

Now, as it happens, there are a few folks in the state legislature who just hate traffic cameras in general. And by mere coincidence, not long after Linndale put up its traffic cameras, another bill passed that said, among other things, traffic cameras could only be used in Ohio if a police officer was, quote, "present at the location of the device." And when this bill went through, almost half the communities in Ohio that had been using traffic cameras said they were going to stop using them. Columbus, Dayton, Springfield, West Carrollton. And certainly no places started using them.

You want to guess who did keep their traffic camera running with an officer stationed by it?

[KNOCKING]

Sean Cole

For a while, Linndale just parked an unmarked cruiser with an officer in it by the cameras. But then they decided, that's nuts. We can't do that, just to have a guy there in a car all day. No. Instead, they built a hut. I call it a hut.

Sean Cole

It's got a TV, a combination DVD/VCR machine, boombox, microwave--

And yes, a split-screen security monitor so they can keep tabs on what's happening on the roadway. Oh. And there's a window through which you can see the cameras. Ralph Moncrief was the traffic enforcement officer on duty that day. He's a mixed martial artist. Sometimes, he brings a weight bench to his shift and trains outside the hut for his tournaments. Mayor McLaughlin explained this to me while we were sitting in the village hall with Linndale's law director, Richard Neff.

Sean Cole

After I got back home from Cleveland, the Ohio State Supreme Court ruled that the law saying an officer must be present at the traffic cameras was unconstitutional, that it violated the same provision as before with Ed Kasputis' bill.

Representative Patton was disappointed, partly because the decision could compromise this whole new round of bills he has drafted. One says you can't use traffic cameras if your community takes in more than 30% of its money every year from camera tickets. Another says the number of camera tickets a community issues can't be more than twice the population of that place. And you can't issue any tickets at all if your town has fewer than 200 people. He still insists that the bills are not specifically targeting Linndale. Linndalers don't buy it.

Mayor McLaughlin says, if the ticketing in Linndale was just to make money, they'd put cameras up all over the village. Representative Patton doesn't buy it.

And in both cases, how could you buy it? It seems obvious what each side is up to, and yet neither will acknowledge it, even though both sides are well within their rights to be doing what they're doing. Both are playing by the rules, by the letter of the law. And yet, at the same time, in both cases, what they're doing just seems a little underhanded somehow. So it's hard to come down on one side or the other. Although, as with all my favorite comedies, it's fun to watch the little mouse outsmart the cat over and over again.

Ira Glass

Sean Cole-- he's one of the producers of our show. Coming up, a transportation system that is designed to keep you waiting and to send you on routes far out of your way, which is exactly as unfun as it sounds. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, Expect Delays-- stories of trying to get from one place to another.

Ira Glass

We have arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, Asleep at the Wheel.

So in the first half of today's program, we heard about people speeding down a stretch of road in Ohio faster than the speed limit. Now in this act, we head to a different continent and another stretch of road and another group of motorists trying to get from here to there, but not speeding at all. Kind of the opposite, in fact. Here's Stephanie Foo.

Stephanie Foo

Louisa Lim was reporting for the BBC in China. And in September 2004, she was heading through the province of Ningxia to interview a mayor. She was with her producer, her cameraman, a driver, and her minder.

Stephanie Foo

Which is her polite way of saying he kept getting in fights with all of the officials he'd introduced them to. Anyway, so there's five people and Louisa-- a whole entourage. And they're all crammed into this tiny van. People in China call them bread vans because they're white and boxy like a loaf of bread. It's like a Chinese Wes Anderson film, complete with curmudgeonly Chinese Bill Murray.

Stephanie Foo

Louisa's minder went and talked to some other people in the jam and learned that there was a massive road repair, which had narrowed the highway to one lane. A bunch of trucks tried to cut the line and jam themselves through the narrow opening, which just created an impassable mess of tiny traffic jams and accidents. Her minder, for once, hadn't picked a fight with anyone. He didn't even seem particularly frustrated. It was weird.

Stephanie Foo

In fact, traffic jams that last more than a couple days happen so often in China that there was a parody pop song detailing what you should always keep in your car, just in case. There was an epic jam in 2010 that made international news, where a highway was backed up for more than 10 days and stretched 74 miles.

There are a few reasons why this happens. A huge increase in the number of cars on the road in recent years, lots of newer drivers with little experience, badly maintained roads, and poor civic planning.

Stephanie Foo

They managed to get the flow of traffic going again within 12 hours, but something that really stuck with Louisa was the look all the other truck drivers gave her.

Stephanie Foo

This is Liu Zefeng. He's 47 years old. He's been a trucker in China for about 18 years now. He was not in Louisa's traffic jam, but he's been in plenty of jams like it. On every 11-day haul he takes, he says he'll get stuck at least a couple times overnight, midnight to morning, which, amazingly, doesn't bother him.

Stephanie Foo

Chinese truckers are so used to these jams that Liu told me that, late in the evening, everyone starts driving more slowly. And after midnight, when traffic gets slow enough, truck drivers will turn their vehicles off and go to sleep right there in the middle of the highway. And even if the road clears ahead of them, they won't inch forward. They'll just wait until morning to wake up, start their cars, and get going again.

Liu's worst jam was during a 2008 ice storm, where the road became too slippery to drive on. He and all the other truck drivers went to sleep like they always do, figuring it'd be over in a few hours. But in the morning, it was still jammed.

Stephanie Foo

Their employers actually give them a case to keep or trade. Liu was stuck there for a total of three days and three nights. There are videos online of people getting out of their cars during large traffic jams. And they get creative to entertain themselves. They play volleyball, barbecue, even square dance. I was excited to discover how Liu passed the time.

Stephanie Foo

Normally, if you're on your way somewhere and there's a delay, you can choose to fight back, search for an alternate route, call customer service to book a different flight, ditch your bike and rent a car. But sometimes there's no other option. You've got no choice but to surrender and live in the moment of your delay, like Liu does. Relax. Kick back. Sleep it off.

Ira Glass

Stephanie Foo is one of the producers of our show.

Ira Glass

Act Three, The Longest Distance Between Two Points.

In New York City, most of the subways are not accessible. Almost 80% don't have elevators. So disabled New Yorkers and some elderly New Yorkers use a system called Access-A-Ride. Cities all over the country have their own versions. In New York City, the way it works is that you call the day before you need to go somewhere. You have to call by 5:00 PM to schedule your trip. They assign you a pickup time. Often, it's as much as two hours before the time you need to get to where you're going.

What this means is that, if you're leading a normal, adult life and your plans change in any way on the day of the ride, you're stuck. You can't do anything. You can't get a different time. If you cancel, you have to explain why. Too many cancellations within a certain period, and they can cut you off. And that is the service when it runs the way that it's supposed to. Delays and waits are literally built into it. Like, that's the premise.

Britney Wilson uses the service every day.

Britney Wilson

I've been using Access-A-Ride since I was 11 years old, around the age many New York City kids begin riding public transportation by themselves. I'm a black woman with Cerebral Palsy. There are many different forms and degrees of CP, but mine particularly affects my lower body. I wear leg braces and walk with crutches. Access-A-Ride is notorious among the people who rely on it for being inefficient and unreliable. People call it Stress-A-Ride.

I've been fighting this system since I was a kid. At first, I protested the service's problems in true millennial fashion. I complained to family, friends, and social media followers, wrote blog posts, and started change.org petitions. Then I went to law school to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to fight on behalf of myself and others. I graduated two years ago from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Now I'm back home in Brooklyn, practicing civil rights law, and I'm back on Access-A-Ride. I take it to and from work every day.

I've spoken at transportation board meetings and appeared on local news talking about changes that need to be made to the system. And I'm not shy about filing formal complaints. Something happens every two months or so the calls for it. One of my biggest problems with Access-A-Ride is the wait. You tell Access-A-Ride when you need to be somewhere, and they give you a pickup time. But the pickup times are aspirational at best. They've actually started calling them Promised Times. But it seems like a promise made with their fingers crossed behind their backs. Access-A-Ride is considered to be on time if it's not more than 30 minutes late, but it's common for it to take over an hour. You're supposed to wait outside at your pickup time, no matter the weather. Sometimes riders just don't get picked up at all.

Although we riders can get stuck waiting for hours, drivers only have to give us a five-minute grace period if we're not outside when they arrive. They're encouraged to call us if they don't see us, but technically, those calls are courtesies, not requirements. One winter evening, my driver stopped to pick up a passenger who wasn't outside when we pulled up. After a few minutes, a black woman who was probably in our 70s exited a nearby McDonald's, rushing and pushing a walker in front of her.

There were three black garbage bags resting on her walker seat. As the driver got off the bus to let the lift down, he yelled, you're lucky I didn't leave you. It's been more than five minutes. Five minutes, she asked. I've been waiting for this ride for over three hours. The people in the McDonald's let me sit down and wait inside, and I didn't see you when you first pulled up. You're over the bag limit, the driver said. The limit is two. You have three. That's what's wrong with Access-A-Ride people. You take advantage. You're spoiled and entitled.

I've come across this attitude a lot. We should be happy we have this service, no matter how dysfunctional it is or what we have to put up with in the process. We should be happy we have anything at all. Poor people and people of color are often accused of being entitled, but so are people with disabilities. And many people who use Access-A-Ride are all three.

The woman was outraged. She told the driver he didn't even have to help her with her bags. She was handling them herself. She explained that she only got to go grocery shopping once in a while, so she crammed as many grocery bags as she could into the garbage bags, trying her best not to violate the bag limit. Do you have a mother, she asked the driver. Would you want someone treating her this way when she gets old?

The thing I complain the most about is the routes. Access-A-Ride drivers have to follow predetermined routes, which are created each day based on who's riding and where they're going. But the routes don't make any sense. Often, half of my ride is spent going in the opposite direction of my destination. I only work 8 miles away, maybe a 45-minute drive, but on average, it takes me 2 hours each way to go between my home and my office.

Many drivers have openly agreed with me about changes that need to be made to the service. On rides, we bond over everything from the struggle of being a Knicks fan to the struggle of being a pawn in the Access-A-Ride system. It's a stressful job, and they don't like having to drive from Brooklyn to the Bronx and back again in no logical order any more than passengers like having to experience it.

Sometimes I complain to drivers I like about drivers I don't. One of my favorite drivers told me that drivers did the same thing when it comes to passengers. I'm probably famous around the Access-A-Ride base, I joked. Then he gave me a piece of advice. No matter how bad drivers may be, try not to confront them personally, he said. Be careful. They know where you live.

Whether they realize it or not, I know the way many drivers treat me may be influenced by how I look and, by extension, what they think they can get away with in my presence. I'm a 5' 1" black woman on crutches. On an average day, most people are shocked when I open my mouth and they realize I'm not 16.

The worst thing a driver tried happened right outside my house just this summer. I was coming home from work. There was only one other passenger on board. He dropped her off at her apartment in Brooklyn, and my house was just 10 minutes away. I live on a quiet residential block. When the driver turned onto my street, I took my headphones off and began to gather my things. I knew that no one else was home, so I searched for my house keys and draped them around my neck.

The driver pulled up to my house, opened the bus door, rose, and made an announcement. I've got to pee, he said. Had to go since I picked you up in Manhattan. I wondered why he felt the need to share this information. He grabbed a Styrofoam coffee cup and began walking toward me. I thought he was going to help me off the bus, so I prepared to hand him my crutches, but he didn't take them. I'm just going to go in this cup, he said. Then he sat in a seat across from me, began to unzip his fly, and I got it. He was going to pee right then and there.

As inappropriate and disgusting as it was, it wasn't physically harmful. Should I scream right now, I wondered? Would that be appropriate or would I be overreacting? Knowing that people with disabilities are more likely to be victims of sexual assault, I said a silent prayer to myself. I thought about just leaving my bag and trying to make a break for it. But with my crutches, I couldn't get off the bus on my own. I was just feet away from my house, but I couldn't get there. I wondered if he would have done this if I were white. I said nothing and turned my head away.

Years ago, when I was a teenager on this bus, I thought education would be the answer to all of my problems. But even with a law degree, I'm still a woman. I'm still black. And I'm still disabled. I thought, if this man does try anything more, your shiny Ivy League law degree will not save you. He finished with what he was doing and then he took my crutches to assist me in getting off the bus.

I hated the thought of him having to touch them, but I had no other choice. I handed him the bottom half, hoping that his hands wouldn't get anywhere near the handle part that I actually had to hold. As if nothing had happened, he asked if I also wanted him to hold my purse or my lunch bag. As I got off the bus, he offered to open my front gate for me. No, thank you, I said. I went inside as quickly as I could, washed my hands, wiped down my crutches, and called Transit to file a complaint.

A few days later, Access-A-Ride told me the driver had been fired. And since then, thanks to that complaint and maybe all my other complaints, they seemed to be trying to address some of my issues. Sometimes I get better routing that gets me to work faster, which is nice, but not at all what I'm aiming for. I don't want them to fix it just for me. That's not fixing the problem. The problem is with the whole system. That's what I can't seem to get across to Access-A-Ride.

Once, when I was complaining to a representative about the roundabout two-hour routes they create for me and everyone else, the representative pointed out that, at least on that particular day, I'd made it to my destination on time. I explained that wasn't the point. You still want to file a complaint, even though you got there on time, he clarified? Yes. I don't understand the problem, then.

Ira Glass

Britney Wilson. She practices civil rights law at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. A version of this story first appeared on the website Longreads, which is a great site, by the way. You can find that at longreads.com.

Ira Glass

Well, our program was produced today by Stephanie Foo. The people who put our show together includes Elna Baker, Elise Bergerson, Susan Burton, Ben Calhoun, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Kimberly Henderson, David Kestenbaum, Seth Lind, Miki Meek, Jonathan Menjivar, BA Parker, Benjamin Phelan, Robyn Semien, Alissa Shipp, Lilly Sullivan, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our senior producer is Brian Reed.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

Louisa Lim, the reporter who got stuck in a traffic jam in China in Act Two of our show today has a podcast about China called The Little Red Podcast.

Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he really loves this one song from Hamilton that never made it into the musical. Maybe because of the name.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.