Amtrak reverses course, won't charge wheelchair users $25,000 to reconfigure train car
Amtrak has reversed course and will not charge an accessibility advocacy group $25,000 for two employees who use power wheelchairs to travel from Chicago to Bloomington, Illinois, for a meeting this week, the company told USA TODAY.
The Chicago-based group Access Living told The Washington Post and NPR that it reached out to Amtrak in late December to arrange travel for 10 members of its staff. Because five of them are in wheelchairs and the 7 a.m. train they wanted to travel on only has three spots for wheelchairs, Amtrak said it would have to reconfigure the cars to accommodate the additional two wheelchairs, incurring thousands in expenses. (The Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 requires there to be at least one wheelchair-accessible car on any train with one or more cars.)
An Amtrak group sales representative reportedly told Access Living that as the result of a 2019 policy change, the rail company will no longer absorb the cost of reconfiguring train cars and thus would have to charge the group $25,000 to do so for the additional two wheelchair users. According to Amtrak's website, the regular coach fare from Chicago to Bloomington is $16.
“At first, we thought it was a typo,” Bridget Hayman, a spokesperson for Access Living, told The Washington Post after reading the email containing the $25,000 quote from Amtrak's sales team.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/amtrak-reverses-course-wont-charge-wheelchair-users-dollar25000-to-reconfigure-train-car/ar-BBZbBTl?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=hplocalnews
= new reply since forum marked as read
can't do the right thing in the first place 
