June 12, 2005 latimes.com

Report: Transport Fails to Serve Disabled

By SIOBHAN McDONOUGH, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON -- Disabled people who need to use public trains or buses are
not being well served despite billions of dollars spent to improve
transportation for the handicapped, government advisers report.

Buses leave disabled commuters waiting at stops or may be ill-equipped to
handle wheelchairs, the National Council on Disability said in a report
being released Monday. Wheelchairs can get stuck in the wide spaces
between platforms and trains, the council said. A bus driver may forget
to announce stops, withholding vital information from a blind passenger.

The council, a federal agency that advises the president and Congress,
found persistent problems for disabled people who use public
transportation despite years of federal efforts to make buses and trains
more accessible.

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 helped disabled people get
around, and 70 federal programs fund different aspects of community
transportation services.

Although some public transit agencies had already provided accessible bus
service, the ADA accelerated the trend. In 1989, 36 percent of the
national bus fleet was accessible. Thirteen years later, 91 percent of
the fleet was lift- or ramp-equipped.

The disability council's chairman, Lex Frieden, 56, has firsthand
experience of the progress.

"In the last 30 years I've seen amazing changes," said Frieden, who uses
a wheelchair. "The fact that I can go down the street from my home and
catch a bus with a ramp on it, take the bus down to the transit center,
to get on the light rail across town, go to another transit center, catch
a bus, go to an airport, get on a plane."

Still, he added, more needs to be done to help the 6 million people with
disabilities who have difficulties getting the transportation they need.

Major gaps exist for those who live in rural areas or rely on paratransit
-- a supplemental system of transporting people from their home to work,
appointments or transit centers. The act says that where public
transportation exists, it needs to be accessible to disabled people, but
it doesn't address rural areas that don't have public transportation.

"It's not a matter of convenience for disabled people to have access to
transportation," said Frieden. "It's a matter of employment or not, a
matter of health care or not, sometimes a matter of education or not.
It's a matter of full participation in a community or not."

Accessible streets, sidewalks and other public infrastructure are
essential. Communities across the country often put up inadvertent
barriers, such as hard-to-reach bus stops, intersections without curb
ramps and pedestrian signals that the visually impaired can't read.

Some bus agencies have begun using automatic stop announcement systems,
but they are not always reliable. Wheelchair lifts on buses are not
always well maintained. Sometimes bus drivers don't even stop if they
think helping a handicapped passenger will put them behind schedule.

Hassles for handicapped subway riders include nonworking elevators and
dangerous gaps between trains and platforms.

The report analysis is based on assessments from riders and advocates,
transit operators and researchers.

http://www.ilusa.com/News/ncd_transport4pwd05.htm