The Greensboro Transit Agency (GTA) has announced it is renaming the paratransit service it offers.
Since 1992, the paratransit service providing transportation for persons with disabilities has been called Specialized Community Area Transportation (SCAT). The actual name was rarely used even in GTA material and the paratransit services was usually referred to as SCAT.
The new name of the paratransit service is Access GSO. The press release states, “The Access GSO name was chosen from among numerous suggestions received from riders, drivers, staff and the Greensboro Community.”
But Access GSO is also the name suggested by SCAT rider Dr. Anjail Ahmad at the Nov. 5, 2019 City Council meeting.
At that meeting Ahmad complained about the name SCAT, saying that scat “means get away” and that the other meaning, “animal excrement,” was even worse.
Ahmad said that the name SCAT “is an affront to the City of Greensboro and to the riders.”
She added, “Those who know know it is a shameful thing.”
Ahmad noted that High Point’s paratransit service was named HPTS Access and in Durham the paratransit service was called GoDurham Access.
She suggested that Greensboro change the name from SCAT to Greensboro Access or GSO Access.
Ahmad was speaking during the public comment period of the Greensboro City Council meeting, a portion of the meeting that was discontinued from April through September, although people were allowed to send comments via email to the City Council. Those email comments were not read aloud during the meetings and were not summarized in any meaningful way.
Although people have said that the City Council doesn’t pay any attention to the public comments, sometimes the City Council does. In January 2020, a public comment resulted in the City Council refusing to accept a $250,000 grant from the Justice Department for the Greensboro Police Department.
The name change for SCAT took a little longer, but in the end Ahmad got exactly what she requested.
Which is it, Access GSO or GSO Access?
“Scat” is a woodsy term for nature’s deposit.
And now an acronym that was explained on the bus right next to the letters that everyone is familiar with will be changed throughout the fleet at the cost of thousands of dollars even though they’ve had to raise the cost of transport in order to keep the service afloat. What a waste of taxpayer and rider funding.