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Access to Public Transportation story By Janine Bertram Kemp
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ack of access to transportation has always been an issue for people with disabilities, dramatically reducing opportunities for employment, recreation, education, and inclusion in society. In the 1970s and 1980s, transportation became a flashpoint for the disability community to gather, discuss, and organize, city by city, area by area, as well as nationally. The fight for lifts on buses was gaining in the disability community. ADAPT, the grassroots activist group, was formed in 1983 to obtain a national policy on accessible transit. Thanks to its efforts and those of others who joined them, lifts on all new buses became mandated 30 days after the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed. Back in 1970, the Urban Mass Transit Act (UMTA) mandated lifts on all new buses so that people with mobility disabilities could have access to public transit. However, like many legislative mandates, it was not enforced, and lifts on buses encountered significant pushback from city transit authorities as well as the American Public Transit Association (APTA). In the late 1970s and 1980s, access to all forms of public transportation became a demand that was widespread among people with disabilities in
the United States. It was an issue that helped galvanize disparate disability organizations into an enduring movement for civil rights. This happened in part because of continuous, strong resistance from APTA and transit authorities in individual urban areas. From the beginning, people with disabilities understood that the need for transit access was a priority. For those without the significant financial resources to purchase a personal accessible vehicle (at the time, the cost of lift or ramp modifications could run between $15,000 and $30,000), public buses were the only means available to get to work and recreational activities. While the general public and some transit officials viewed those with significant disabilities as only needing transit to medical appointments, the disability community knew that there would never be societal integration without the “right to ride to work� and other activities that were a part of daily human life. While the strongest transit industry resistance centered around access for people with mobility impairments, transit officials also resisted access for people who were blind/low vision, people who were deaf, and those with intellectual disabilities. The transit industry offered paratransit as the alternative to accessible public buses and cited cost as a reason they could
not purchase buses with lifts and make fixed-route buses accessible. Paratransit systems offered door-to-door service in vans or small buses. Appointments for rides had to be made at least 24 hours in advance and many systems limited the availability of the number of rides per week or month. Paratransit rides were notoriously late or no-shows and could not be relied upon for entertainment use such as sporting events or restaurant dining, let alone for employment and medical appointments. It was not cost that motivated a recalcitrant transit system, since surveys showed a paratransit ride cost the system approximately $25.00 compared to $1.25 for fixed-route usage (1984 costs, when the cost was amortized over the life of the bus, as was the industry standard for other cost computations). It appeared that the transit industry simply did not want to cope with change. Yet changes were indeed on the horizon, and the laws that mandated them were being passed. In 1968, the state of California passed legislation mandating that BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) be accessible to people with disabilities. Amid mounting pressure, the Washington Metro system was sued successfully in 1972 to
