A TICKET TO RIDE
Cook, Timothy M.
A TICKET TO RIDE BY TIMOTHY M. COOK The scene and the song look and sound like the civil-rights movement of the 1960s. "We will ride, we will ride With the strength of truth And justice on our...
...That action had little to do with technology and much to do with politics...
...Without that multibil-lion-dollar subsidy, public transportation would have gone wheels up a long time ago...
...A dozen disability-rights organizations from around the country, led by ADAPT, filed suit against DOT the day after the 1986 rule was issued, asking a Federal court to strike it down...
...Congress has also been active during DOT's regulatory nap...
...Disabled people were lucky if they were permitted to go to a public school, let alone be hired for a job...
...A section of the Rehabilitation Act prohibits the exclusion of disabled people from any Federally assisted transportation program...
...The transit industry, as a result, may no longer sit idly by and point self-right-eously to the ruling it won in 1981...
...The Education of the Handicapped Act, passed in 1975, changed that...
...Now in office were a new breed of bureaucrats who saw their mission as repeal of restrictions on industry conduct that industry viewed as burdensome...
...It's not terribly costly to make buses accessible...
...When the court remanded the rule to DOT, Secretary Lewis took the occasion to abrogate all of the accessibility requirements, abruptly returning the transit industry to older, toothless standards...
...And they'll probably have to go home early: Many para-transit systems do not operate after 9 p.m...
...So ADAPT is planning more public protests...
...APTA's efforts have borne fruit...
...And the Federal Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board has just ordered the Philadelphia transit system to install elevators in thirteen subway stations that were reconstructed without providing accessible entrances for wheelchair users...
...If, by luck, they're able to reserve a ride, they're likely to find the fare is higher than for regular transit...
...Department of Transportation ruled that the technological feasibility of bus lifts had yet to be proven...
...By 1979, however, DOT Secretary Brock Adams was able to issue a new regulation mandating that all new buses be equipped with them, based on new and dramatic developments in lift technology...
...Finally, in 1986, the new regulation appeared...
...By 1981, Brock Adams was no longer the DOT Secretary, and the Department rescinded the rule...
...Public protests have been their chief means of calling attention to the exclusionary practices they face, and the San Francisco protest was only the latest in a series of "street actions" sponsored by ADAPT to coincide with APTA meetings in Detroit, Washington, Denver, San Antonio, and other cities...
...Things were different in an earlier time...
...No ifs, ands, or buts...
...But the Federal money comes with strings attached...
...DOT attorneys told the court that they wouldn't really mind if the regulation was struck down, especially since DOT was considering withdrawal of the rule anyway...
...Police arrived with flashing lights and screaming sirens and arrested the protesters...
...The court ordered DOT to try again...
...DOT grantees may be permitted to take the least expensive or most cost-effective route toward providing services to their disabled patrons," ruled Judge Katz, "but those services must in fact be provided...
...Cities that historically excluded disabled people from transit services were required to do no more than cities that had been providing accessible transportation for years...
...So APTA went to court to challenge the DOT rule...
...Timothy M. Cook, an attorney with the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia, specializes in the civil rights of disabled people...
...Federal financial assistance covers 80 per cent of the expense of installing a wheelchair lift on a bus," says Robert Reuter, a transportation engineer for Access Systems in Baltimore...
...Disabled people want to work," says Wade Blank, who heads Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation (ADAPT), an advocacy group with chapters in twenty-five cities...
...And the remaining 20 per cent can be depreciated over the life of the vehicle...
...The cost of wheelchair access is thus far less than the price of such extras as air conditioning...
...There is no basis for the belief that the issue of public transit for disabled persons is a civil-rights issue...
...Judge Katz's ruling could be tied up for years in appeals, and they may have to file new lawsuits to force recalcitrant transit systems to comply with his decision...
...The regulation is "arbitrary and capricious," he ruled, adding that the civil right of disabled people to use public transportation cannot be eviscerated because of the cost...
...It would cost them some of the precious new funding Congress had just given them...
...DOT dragged its feet for four years while the disability community waited...
...Disabled New Yorkers have reached a settlement with the city's transit authority stipulating that all new buses purchased there will be fully accessible, and key subway stations are being retrofitted with elevators and ramps to open the subway system to disabled users...
...But, say leaders of the disability-rights movement, the battle for access is far from over...
...The issue is civil rights, and the focus is public transportation...
...On January 4,1988, U.S...
...The municipal bus rolled to the curb in front of the Moscone Convention Center in downtown San Francisco last fall and began to disgorge its passengers, as it and hundreds like it do every day...
...It also lobbies against transit regulations it considers unnecessary or ill-advised...
...Under local option, the transit industry can segregate disabled people in paratransit vans rather than provide rides in lift-equipped regular buses with all its other passengers...
...A closer look, however, reveals that the guitarist uses a wheelchair, as do her friends, and the calendar says it's 1988...
...In cities and towns, college campuses and meeting halls throughout the country, disabled people are banding together...
...Several hundred greeters, most of them using wheelchairs and carrying signs saying We Will Ride, surrounded the bus and blocked access to the convention hall...
...And Phoenix, Atlanta, Syracuse, and Oakland have recently made commitments to purchase only lift-equipped vehicles...
...the APTA lawsuit provided a timely excuse...
...So says an "issue paper" put out by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), the trade association and industry voice of the nation's transit systems...
...The same result has been achieved in Illinois and Maine by way of state court rulings to enforce disability-rights statutes enacted by legislatures...
...They'll be at APTA's 1988 annual meeting in Montreal come October...
...In its initial regulatory effort in 1976, the U.S...
...In the Surface Transportation Assistance Act of 1982, Federal lawmakers ordered DOT to go back and write a new rule, an accessibility regulation with minimum-service criteria, and to do so within six months...
...Ever since it won its court victory over disabled people in 1981 and got the accessibility regulation rescinded, APTA has been smug...
...Unless they have called several days in advance to reserve a ride on a "special-services" para-transit van, they can count on staying at home...
...Transit systems weren't accustomed to serving people with wheelchairs...
...District Judge Marvin Katz did just that, ruling that the DOT accessibility regulation fell far short of enforcing the Federal disability-rights laws enacted by Congress...
...Besides, something else was on everyone's mind: Transportation officials never said it in public, but they were worried that "normal" passengers might be bothered by the presence of freaky-looking disabled people...
...APTA spends the bulk of its time and resources lobbying Capitol Hill for increased Federal aid to its members, which provide mass transportation in every major urban center in America...
...With those funds, shiny new buses were put oh the streets, and new rapid-rail systems were built...
...But this day was different...
...So long as transit systems provided the barest modicum of "special efforts" for disabled persons, they were deemed to be doing enough...
...The regulation also limited the amount a transit system must spend on accessibility to 3 per cent of its budget, regardless of the city's history of providing access...
...The problem, he says, is that "they often have no way of getting from their homes to their workplaces...
...Newly constructed subway and rapid-rail lines in San Francisco, Miami, Washington, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore are barrier-free...
...The passengers were APTA officials in convention...
...He also ordered DOT "to move promptly...
...We will ride, we will ride With the strength of truth And justice on our side By the grace of God above Our battle cry is love And we will ride, we will ride...
...The APTA visitors had to climb over lines of wheelchairs to get into their annual conference...
...And disabled people who want mobility are organizing in virtually every city...
...At APTA's western regional conference in Phoenix earlier last year, for example, ADAPT not only picketed the industry meeting but also joined with the local disability community to protest the refusal of the city to equip its new buses with lifts...
...The accessibility rule was another story...
...It included a few improvements over the Department's previous efforts, but retained the concept of "local option," which the disabled community likens to the concept of "state's rights" used in the 1950s and 1960s to resist civil-rights laws protecting racial minorities...
...One condition imposed by the Urban Mass Transportation Act is that disabled people have "the same right" to use public transit as everyone else...
...For that reason, he says, "the actual annual capital cost of a lift to the bus operator is only about $164 per bus...
...The first generation of beneficiaries of the 1975 law are now young adults with the training and skills they need to enter the job market...
...Seattle and Denver have had accessible buses on the street for years now...
...Since then, though, disabled people have been whittling away at the transit industry...
...Federal dollars now pay for 80 per cent of the cost of new equipment purchased by the transit industry...
...Congress opened the schoolhouse doors to disabled children...
...APTA liked the new Federal dollars streaming to its members...
...We're acting in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, using nonviolent civil disobedience to obtain our civil rights," said Mark Johnson, an ADAPT organizer from Atlanta, as he was hoisted onto a lift-equipped paddy wagon...
...It came as little surprise when Drew Lewis, the new Secretary of Transportation, placed the Brock Adams accessibility rule at the top of the Department's "regulatory-relief agenda...
...Still, disabled people struggle daily to obtain transportation to work or school, to go shopping, visit a friend, or take in a baseball game or a concert...
...They are telling transit officials to read the handwriting on the wall: We Will Ride...
...And Congress required, in the Federal AidHighway Act, that all new transit equipment and facilities be accessible...
...because, too many still think, disabled people have to be in bed early...
Vol. 52 • May 1988 • No. 5
