Wheelchair Accessible?

So the other day, I was on the bus heading home, and I was tired and drained as I often am when coming back from work. The thing I love most about my commute home is that I can almost always be home in about 25 minutes from the time the bus leaves Port Authority. Well, at the first stop off the Turnpike in Pal Pk, the bus driver stopped to pick up a man who was in a wheelchair. This is not an easy feat, and I commended the bus driver for making the effort to accomodate him instead of blowing this guy off and letting another bus pick him up.

However, we ended up sitting there for 20 minutes while the bus driver moved the seats in the wheelchair section (I was sitting in one of those seats so I had to move), opened up a section of the bus, helped the man get himself and his wheelchair up the ramp, and tried to fold the ramp back up. I got off the bus after 10 minutes of the driver fruitlessly trying to fold in the stuck ramp. I was lucky cause the stop was 4 stops away from where I normally get off, so it was a walkable distance to my house, but it was still like a mile and I was tired.

So at what point is it ok to sacrifice the satisfaction of 20 some riders for 1 person? While all this was going on, more than half the riders got off, and the other half were visibly annoyed. It certainly wasn't the driver's or the handicapped man's fault that we were delayed even more because of a faulty ramp.

But sitting on the bus for 20-30 minutes (what should have been the length of time of my entire commute alone) made me feel a lot of emotions. I couldn't help but be a) embarrassed for the handicapped man who was sitting on the bus knowing he was the cause of this delay, and b) frustrated that the bus wasn't as wheelchair accessible as one might hope. After all, had it been used frequently or better equipped, the ramp wouldn't have acted up the way it did. It was an all around bad situation for everyone- the driver, the passengers, the handicapped man. And it brought up questions like- should the man have been using public transportation given his condition? was it wrong for us, the passengers to not have exercised some patience and tolerance in the situation? Hmmm.