Buses have ramps or lifts for a good reason: It's the law of the land. The Americans With Disabilities Act has done much to integrate people with handicaps into the regular workings of society, and that benefits everyone. An accessible public transportation system obviously plays its part.

The Port Authority of Allegheny County says it is committed to being such a system. Donald Stancile of Brushton doubts it. For months he has protested what he says is the Port Authority's lack of action on his complaints about problems with bus ramps and lifts.

Last week, after a driver on the 86B Frankstown bus could not put down a ramp with a malfunctioning lever to pick him up, he drove his motorized wheelchair in front of the bus and blocked it. This was not the first such action; by his own admission, he has blocked buses a couple of times before. This time he was arrested by police on charges of obstructing traffic and disorderly conduct.

He was right to this extent: The driver should have manually let down the ramp. The Port Authority has admitted the mistake, and the driver will be retrained in the use of equipment to help the handicapped.

But that doesn't make blocking the bus right. In the real world in which the Port Authority operates, mechanical devices are subject to failure, and sometimes people fail in meeting their responsibilities, too. The issue is whether the agency is making a decent effort to comply with the law, especially when problems are revealed. Unless perfection is the only standard, the agency does appear to be trying, although this is a wake-up call that it must try harder.

The Port Authority's swift action to retrain the driver is one token of good faith. It also has a Committee for Accessible Transportation, with members who have their own disabilities and who can offer input and advice. It has a policy of dispatching another bus if a ramp or lift is found not to work (indeed, that was done in this case, but Mr. Stancile disputes that the other bus got to the scene in five minutes; he says it arrived about half an hour later).

In short, there's no need to enshrine Mr. Stancile as the Rosa Parks of the disabled. On this occasion, he should have been taken on the bus. To the extent that others have reported similar problems -- see the letters to the editor -- his complaint has validity. But that didn't justify breaking one law to uphold another. Civil disobedience should be the very last resort, and we are not persuaded that this was such a case.