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Kristopher Morgan, 58, talks to a friend who called to check up on him after the record snowfall last weekend. "I have not been able to reach a bus stop since the snow storm hit," he said Tuesday. Morgan, who needs a wheelchair to get around, uses city buses every day as his main mode of transportation.

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Like most people in Albuquerque, Kristopher Morgan makes frequent trips around town to shop, take in entertainment, attend meetings and visit friends.

Complicating matters, however, is his wheelchair. Morgan, 58, has used it for nearly five years - the result of losing a leg to post-polio complications. He can still take the bus, but he often runs into a problem.

Sixteen years after President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act - which says that any new buses purchased must be wheelchair-accessible - the city's ABQ Ride bus system lags far behind the curve.

Buses in Denver, Tucson, Santa Fe, Salt Lake City, Colorado Springs and El Paso are 100 percent wheelchair-accessible, (some cities reached that mark in the early 1990s). ABQ Ride stands at only 61 percent, with plans to bump the figure up to 86 percent by the end of the year.

"If it were 100 percent accessible, I could do anything," said Morgan, who for the past year has been working with ABQ Ride on access issues as part of a paratransit advisory board.

Faced with the shortage, transit planners have sprinkled accessible buses throughout the daily schedules. On the popular Route 66 line along Central Avenue, for example, buses come every 15 minutes, but accessible buses come every 45. On the Route 5 line along Carlisle and Montgomery boulevards, accessible buses come every 50 minutes, instead of the normal 25-minute frequency.

The 50 or so remaining inaccessible buses also present maintenance problems, since they're about 17 years old. The normal lifespan of a bus is 12 years.

"It is very difficult to maintain a fleet that old," said Jay Faught, a spokesman for ABQ Ride.

The scant accessible service translates into a big inconvenience for Morgan, and it's even worse if the wheelchair-lifting device on an accessible bus isn't working. He says he runs into that problem about once every month and a half.

"I haven't been able to figure it out," he said of the overall situation. "Transit has always been the bastard child . . . it's not a priority."

Talk to the city, and you'll hear similar comments about wheelchair access, along with promises that transit is turning over a new leaf.

"I think that's been a problem in the past," said Greg Payne, the ABQ Ride director who took over in December 2005. "For myself and for (Mayor Martin Chavez), it is a priority."

"We have to be fully accessible," said Chavez, who has been mayor for nine of the last 16 years in which the Americans With Disabilities Act has been in place. "That's just common sense."

As to Albuquerque's lagging behind other cities, "I would accept full responsibility. The buck stops in my office," Chavez said.

"It was a situation of which I was not aware" until recently, he said. "If there's some city doing better than Albuquerque, I'm not going to tolerate it."

Chavez said the system would be 100 percent accessible by the end of his term in 2009, and pointed to the city's planned purchase of new buses this year as evidence of real progress on that front.

"I'll believe it when I see it," said Lucy Birbiglia, a program manager at the Independent Living Resource Center, an Albuquerque advocacy organization for disabled people. "Previously, orders have been made and canceled. I don't think that transit for people with disabilities is one of his priorities."

In 2000 (Chavez was not mayor at the time), the transit department was slated to buy 20 new buses, but instead circumvented the City Council and spent the money on operations, according to in internal city audit published in 2002.

"This increased the need for repairs and maintenance expenses to keep the existing bus fleet operating," the audit revealed.

Had those buses been purchased, ABQ Ride might now be 75 percent accessible instead of 61 percent.

In any event, the department plans to accept delivery of 35 new buses this year. All of them will be wheelchair accessible and replace buses that are not.

They will also, says Faught, feature the latest trend in accessibility: floors at about mid-tire level. Instead of mechanically lifting wheelchair users up several steps, drivers of low-floor buses need only extend a ramp out to the curb. The whole process takes less time and avoids more elaborate lifts that are difficult to maintain.

Low floor buses currently make up a little more than a third of the ABQ Ride fleet.

All that is good news for wheelchair users like Morgan, but it's good news that he's taking skeptically.

"I see some hope," he said, adding, "show me that you really mean this."