Wheelchair Van Transport in Elmwood Park, NJ

Wheelchair-Accessible Transportation in Elmwood Park

Elmwood Park fits about 21,400 people into 2.73 square miles on the east bank of the Passaic River, and 16.8 percent of them are 65 or older. The borough was called East Paterson until New Year's Day 1973, and its older sections — Cherry Hill, Dundee Lake, Passaic Junction and Rosemont — are where most of our calls start. A wheelchair van is not an ambulance: the ramp comes down, the rider stays in their own chair, and the chair is locked to the floor with a four-point tie-down before the lap-and-shoulder belt goes on. Nobody transfers to a bench seat and nobody has to stand. A trip that has to be made lying flat is stretcher transport instead, which we also run.

There is no hospital inside Elmwood Park, and that is the whole local story here. Cross the Passaic River west into Paterson and you reach St. Joseph's University Medical Center at 703 Main Street, a Level II trauma center roughly three miles from Borough Hall at 182 Market Street. Head south through Garfield and back over the river and St. Mary's General Hospital sits at 350 Boulevard in Passaic, emergency department open around the clock. Route 4 begins over in Paterson and Elmwood Park is the very first town it enters, running on through Fair Lawn, Paramus, River Edge and Hackensack — that corridor is how the borough reaches the rest of the county's hospitals. The Valley Hospital at 4 Valley Health Plaza and Bergen New Bridge Medical Center at 230 East Ridgewood Avenue are both in Paramus to the northeast, and Bergen New Bridge pairs its hospital with a 574-bed nursing facility. Hackensack University Medical Center at 30 Prospect Avenue lies due east and is a Level I adult trauma center.

There is no dialysis unit inside the borough either, so every chair time is a trip out. DaVita Radburn Dialysis sits just over the line on Pollitt Drive in Fair Lawn; DaVita Hackensack Dialysis is actually at 113 West Essex Street in Maywood despite the name; and five more units run in Paterson, a river's width to the west. Three mornings a week, same chair, same clock — we set those up as a standing schedule so nobody is re-booking every Sunday night. NJ Transit's 160 and 161 buses run from Elmwood Park to the Port Authority with the 702, 712, 758 and 770 covering local trips, and the Bergen County Line's tracks cross the borough without stopping at a station here — none of which helps a rider who is wrung out and unsteady after four hours on the machine. Original Medicare does not cover routine non-emergency rides; NJ FamilyCare members book through ModivCare at 1-866-527-9933, at least two business days ahead.

Every trip is quoted individually — distance, whether you need a return leg, stairs at either address, and the time of day all matter. Call (973) 389-3110 for a free quote, or use the estimate calculator below. If a Elmwood Park patient cannot sit upright for the journey, a wheelchair van is the wrong vehicle and we will arrange stretcher transport instead.