In my earlier post, Traveling with Mobility Equipment: The Hidden Hurdles, I focused mostly on what happens when wheelchair users try to fly. I wrote about how power chairs are custom-fitted, expensive pieces of freedom, how terrifying it is to hand them over to poorly trained staff, and how the regulations meant to protect travelers with disabilities routinely fail. I also noted right at the beginning of that post that if a traveler has both mobility equipment and a service animal, the difficulty is multiplied.
Recently, I read a Facebook post from Patrick and his girlfriend, Katie, that shows what happens when flying isn’t even an option and you have to rely on ground transportation. Patrick is blind, and Katie uses a motorized wheelchair and travels with a service dog. When they first tried to plan their trip, they had a false start with American Airlines after learning that Katie’s power chair couldn’t fit through the cargo doors of any of the airplanes flying out of her local airport.
So, they decided to meet and take a bus together. What followed was a 24-hour ordeal that proves avoiding airplanes does not mean avoiding the nightmare.
Doing Everything Right Still Isn’t Enough
In my previous post, I talked about how people with disabilities have to dot every “i” and cross every “t” before leaving home. Katie and Patrick did exactly that. Both the Greyhound Customers with Disabilities Page and the FlixBus Wheelchair and Walking Aids Policy clearly state that all of their buses are equipped with wheelchair lifts. Even so, Katie didn’t just trust the websites. She phoned Greyhound when booking to inform them she would be traveling in a wheelchair, and she called back a week before her trip to confirm that the information had been added to her reservation. She was told it was all set.
Yet when their 11:45 AM bus—purchased through Greyhound and operated by FlixBus—arrived at the station, they were informed it did not have a wheelchair lift. Despite doing all the required preparation, they were told their only option was to rebook. Because the afternoon bus was sold out, they had no choice but to buy tickets for the 11:30 PM bus, forcing a wait of nearly 12 hours.
Stranded by a Lack of Local Infrastructure
For a traveler who doesn’t use a wheelchair, a 12-hour delay is frustrating, but you can hop in a cab or rideshare and go to a hotel or restaurant. For Katie and Patrick, leaving the bus station was impossible:
- Neither Uber nor Lyft offered wheelchair-accessible vehicles in the area.
- Local taxi companies that claimed on their websites to offer wheelchair-accessible cabs either admitted they didn’t actually have any or promised to call back and never did.
- Because neither of them lived locally, they were not allowed to use the local paratransit system to get to a nearby hotel or restaurant.
They were trapped for 12 hours in an unstaffed bus station with no attendants to ask for information, help with bags, or offer basic assistance to a couple with disabilities, and they could not get food. Worse yet, the accessible stall in the women’s restroom had a broken changing table inside that made it impossible for Katie to maneuver her chair. She had to use the men’s restroom multiple times throughout the day just to have a usable stall.
Untrained Staff and Life-Threatening Ignorance
When the 11:30 PM bus finally arrived, it had a wheelchair lift, but it was immediately obvious the driver had never been trained on how to board a passenger in a wheelchair. Just like flying, staff without training can make life awful and dangerous:
- Improper Loading: It took the driver several attempts to load Katie onto the bus, which he tried to do with her facing backward and without removing her wheelchair’s footplates.
- Refusing Tie-Downs: Once inside, the driver insisted he did not need to secure her wheelchair using tie-down straps, directly violating the FlixBus Wheelchair Restraint Policy, which requires a restraint system. Traveling at 60+ miles per hour down the highway in an unsecured power chair is extraordinarily dangerous. Once Katie finally convinced him that her chair had to be secured, she had to explain to the driver how to tie her chair down—something he clearly should have known.
- Sideways Positioning: The driver also tried to have her sit sideways rather than facing forward, which would have left her with no seat in front to hold onto and blocked everyone else’s path to the restroom.
During the chaotic loading process, the driver broke the door sensors, causing the bus to think the door was still open even when closed. For four and a half hours, the driver tried and failed to fix it while all the passengers sat on board with zero announcements or information. The only updates Patrick and Katie got were from overhearing conversations between the driver and mechanics.
At around 4:00 AM, because the onboard bus restroom is far too small for a wheelchair user, Katie needed to get off the bus to use the station restroom. That was when they discovered the wheelchair lift had also malfunctioned and wouldn’t operate.
What happened next is every wheelchair user’s worst nightmare. The driver tried to enlist several passengers to physically pick up Katie’s 450-pound power chair—with her still sitting in it—and lower it to the ground. He completely ignored Katie and Patrick’s protests to this dangerous idea. He was only talked out of it because another passenger happened to be a doctor and stepped in to explain that lifting a 450-pound wheelchair with a person in it would likely result in serious injury and a massive lawsuit for the driver and the company. Only then did the driver figure out how to manually operate the hydraulic lift to get her off the bus.
Adding a Service Dog to the Mix
Back inside the bus station at 4:00 AM, completely exhausted, they were told a replacement bus would arrive at 6:00 AM. Katie’s suitcase had been left on the broken bus, and when she went to ask about getting it back, a security guard ordered her to go back inside.
She was also ordered back inside when she tried to take her service dog out to the lit tarmac area to relieve himself. The tarmac was the only lit outdoor space—there were no lights on outside the main entrance to the station. Apparently, the security guard thought two people with visible disabilities going out into complete darkness at four in the morning was a safe and reasonable expectation.
The Heavy Financial Toll of “The Disability Tax”
Six o’clock came and went, and the promised replacement bus never showed up. It still wasn’t there at 7:00 AM or 8:00 AM. The only communication they received from Greyhound was an automated message apologizing for the delay, a $15 voucher for snacks and drinks, and advice to rebook themselves on a later bus—which is how they ended up in that mess in the first place. Seriously, what could two people eat for only $15 today? Nothing!
At that point, Patrick’s brother-in-law connected with someone who had an accessible van and could drive them somewhere they could get a train to their final destination. That emergency solution cost them around $800 cash out of pocket. By the time they finally arrived, they were a full 24 hours late, had to pay for one night of a hotel room they didn’t get to use, and lost the expense of tickets for a comedy show they missed.
Why We Must Keep Sharing These Stories
Think about everything that went wrong here. They couldn’t fly because the regional planes couldn’t fit Katie’s chair. They booked a bus that promised accessibility, called twice to confirm, and still got stranded. When a lift finally showed up, the staff didn’t know how to use it, refused to strap the chair down, broke the bus door sensors, and tried to have bystanders carry a 450-pound chair by hand.
Policies on a website mean nothing if the equipment isn’t maintained and the staff aren’t trained. Until transportation companies—both in the air and on the ground—are held accountable for the massive gap between their accessibility promises and reality, traveling with a disability will continue to be an exhausting, expensive gamble.
Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments. Have you run into similar nightmares on buses, trains, or planes? We have to keep telling these stories until the system actually changes.
Leave a Reply