January 29, 2003
Transportation and the ADA-Updates:  What's happening with ADA transportation 
around the country. 
Presenter:  Marilyn Golden

AARON:  Good afternoon everybody.  My name is Aaron McCullough and I want to 
welcome you to the webcast presentation of transportation and the ADA, updates, 
what's happening with the ADA transportation -- what's happening with ADA 
transportation around the country.  We're very lucky to have our presenter here 
today, Marilyn Golden.  Again, my name is Aaron McCullough, I'm going to 
moderate today and introduce Ms. Golden. 

I want to cover a few technical issues before we get started.  Our presenter is 
going to pause for questions after the presentation, but we want to make sure 
that everybody has an opportunity to send us their questions.  As the website 
directed, you can send your E-mail questions at the address webcast at ILRU.org.  
Please send those now or at any point during the presentation.  We will address 
them pretty much on a first come, first serve basis, and some of you were kind 
enough to send those in advance of training.  So those will be among some of the 
first questions that we'll address to Ms. Golden.  Hopefully we'll have a chance 
to answer everybody's questions during the webcast.  If not, we will answer them 
individually afterwards with whatever contact information you leave us. 

Let's see, if anybody is having any technical difficulties with their real one 
player when they are viewing the captioning translation, feel free to give us a 
call if you're encountering these problems at our technical support line and ask 
for the tech staff who are working on the webcast at the number (713)-520-0232.  
Again, this is transportation and the ADA updates, what's happening with ADA 
transportation around the country.  This is a first of a two-part series on 
transportation that Marilyn Golden is going to present.  This is separate from 
the training that's going to be taking place in New Mexico upcoming March 18th 
through March 20th.  We went to go ahead and mention that.  The registration 
deadline for the intensive three day transportation training is February 21st.  
If you're interested in getting -- what I would consider a very valuable boot 
camp like instruction on transportation and the ADA, please feel free to contact 
us at 1-800-949-4232 and ask for Maria Soria and ask for E-mail.  We have that 
information as well as application forms on the website, the DLRP website, but 
the spaces are filling up fairly quickly.  So if you're interested in that, get 
on that as quickly as you can. 

I'm going to go ahead and introduce your speaker today and get it out of the way 
and let her proceed.  Marilyn Golden, again, is our presenter and she's a policy 
analyst with the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund or DREDF.  She has 
been closely involved with the Americans with Disabilities Act during its 
development, proposal and passage and of course now in the implementation phase.  
She's a highly sought after trainer and we are over lucky to have her lecture 
for these two webcasts as well as to co-lead the training upcoming in March. 

Ms. Golden was elected -- well, was appointed to the U.S. Architectural and 
Transportation Barriers Compliance Board or what's also known as the Access 
Board in 1996 and continues to serve on the Access Board since that time.  She 
is a strong and vocal and popular advocate for the interests of people with 
disabilities with particular interest on transportation, and again, I count 
ourselves lucky to have her here today.  Ms. Golden... 

MARILYN:  Thank you, Aaron.  Thank you for your kind words.  Welcome every 
one to an attempted overview of a very challenging subject to keep up with 
everything in the latest updates in ADA transportation. 

Trying to set up everything for this is interesting.  Aaron, the nice thing 
about a webcast of course is that you can do it from anywhere you have a 
telephone.  I'm doing this one from my home office and there happens to be a lot 
of pets in the house today, so if you hear them, you'll know why. 

As Aaron mentioned, this is not a legal requirements overview per se, it's more 
a current events updates, latest happenings.  Of course during the question 
period, questions on the legal requirements and this or that particular practice 
legal are fine.  The other webcast, hour and a half webcast is two weeks from 
today on -- which is on a set of legal requirements, only not all of them, but 
just one narrow section which is what we called nondiscrimination and service 
delivery.  Things like maintenance of lifts, calling out of stops and things of 
that nature.  There is information about that webcast from the disability law 
research project and of course as Aaron said, the legal requirements we're going 
to go over in great detail at this March training.  

Aaron, I loved that boot camp reference.  There is some good history behind that 
joke.  There are some veterans of ADA training who may remember some of our 
intention training that were dubbed ADA boot camp.  That training will also be 
conducted by Russell Thatcher from multisystems.  It will be a lot of fun. 

I need to first make an announcement before we go on to the main topic.  This is 
concerning disability advocates on any subject.  Today the Senate Jew dish area 
committee will be taking up the nomination of Jeffrey Sutton.  Sutton is known 
for his work towards weakening the ADA and other civil rights laws and several 
resent Supreme Court cases and broad united disability coalition is work to go 
defeat his nomination, but cannot defeat him without all of our support.  So 
there has been a lot of action alerts and I want to reemphasize for people to 
all be calling members of the Senate judiciary committee to oppose the 
nomination of Jeffrey Sutton. 

If you don't have the E-mail alert from ADA watch or from justice for all 
listing the Senate judiciary phone numbers, you can go to the American 
association of people with disabilities website, that's AAPD.com and at the 
bottom is the justice for all archives.  This morning when I checked, this alert 
was the second to the most recent, so it's the second from the very top of the 
list, really easy to find.  It's called the national call in day opposing the 
Sutton nomination.  Go to the AAPD website, and see at the very bottom of the 
home page the justice for all archives.  This alert will be near the top of that 
list, national call in day opposing the Sutton nomination is the name of the 
post. 

Now, I think available to all of you are two materials that are reference 
materials for this webcast, although they're not exactly an outline of what I'm 
doing, but they're background for you.  One is DREDF's ADA transportation 
outline summarizing the ADA's transportation requirements, and the other is the 
complaint form to submit complaints of discrimination to the Federal Transit 
Administration in the area of public transit.  Aaron, those were posted 
connected to the website -- to this webcast, right? 

AARON:   Yes, absolutely.  If you've not been able to locate them, go to the 
ILRU.org site, click on webcast and click on current webcast and it will take 
you right to all those materials for this presentation. 

MARILYN:    Good.  I'll go through some of these updates then and leave a good 
chunk of time at the end for questions.  The theme of the day, if one can be 
summarized, is that there that are still significant problems that persist 
across the country about fixed route, paratransit, also rail transit and 
privately funded transit, but also there is real progress in some places.  Don't 
you wish it was where you live? 

Actually, maybe it is.  I will try to give you some sense of the variety of 
what's happening.  Again, it's hard to keep up with and in some cities you'll 
know more than I do, and I look forward to your input on what's happening where 
you live, especially significant happenings for the bad or the good. 

The moral of the story is that advocacy, education and enforcement efforts work 
and are the only thing that does.  Sometimes slowly and with difficulty, but 
there are no shortcuts and there have been few improvements without advocacy by 
the disability community.  I won't say none.  There had transit systems acting 
in good faith and cooperation, but a lot of places where we've seen problems, it 
has taken advocacy, perhaps most places, to move things. 

I'm going to focus on some general points first and then talk about fixed route 
buses.  That is buses on fixed routes according to fixed schedules.  Then I'll 
talk about paratransit and some other things if we have time. 

First of all, some general comments, I wanted to make the overall point that in 
DREDF's view the negative Supreme Court decisions that we've been seeing are not 
having an impact particularly, at least a strong impact, on transportation 
litigation.  Even the one that affected money damages and lawsuits, and I'll 
talk a little bit more about this in a bit. 

Another comment that really approaches all the areas is an interesting thing 
that I want to describe to you that took place in saint Lewis, Missouri over the 
last few years.  I mention it because it's away things have moved forward that 
is not the usual way, and it's possibly something that other cities can get to 
happen where they live. 

What the thing -- the thing that dramatically moved things forward in St. Louis 
and there was a situation where advocates agreed that there were a lot of 
problems in transportation areas, was a couple of very good reporters from the 
regional paper, the St. Louis post dispatch did a series of investigative 
articles looking very closely at what are the problems with the bus, with 
paratransit, et cetera, et cetera and wrote a series of articles giving graphic 
examples of what people were going through.  Those articles got so much 
attention that the transit agency on its own decided to pay for an expensive 
assessment of its own operations in terms of disability transit and the ADA.  It 
brought in the top investigator in the country, and also brought in DREDF to do 
a training and subsequently have made at least some changes for sure.  Advocates 
acknowledge that service has improved, and it's just very interesting to see 
what the results can be if something interesting like that. 

Another overall comment, there has been a lot of important litigation going on 
in Atlanta over the mart ta transit system and one aspect of this was a victory 
in federal court in Atlanta when it required accessibility, not only to the 
transit services of martA, the transit system, but also to the website.  That 
decision came down in the same month as the southwest airlines decision which 
held that the ADA was not applicable to the website of Southwest Airlines.  The 
Southwest Airlines case got a lot of attention, but there is a big problem with 
it, which is that Southwest Airlines as an airlines is not covered by the ADA 
any way.  It's arguably much more covered by the Air Carrier Access Act, but the 
marta case is clearly covered by the ADA.  The court decisions that the ADA 
decided that the website should be accessible.  Marta as been in court over 
serious transportation problems as well and there was a preliminary injunction 
issued against marta in December. 

And if someone is interested later in the questions, I could give a summary of 
what the court is requiring in marta.  It's a very nice example of the kinds of 
broad improvements that litigation can sometimes bring.  There is a lot of 
transit litigation now.  I don't mean hundreds of suits or irresponsible suits, 
but I mean perhaps ten or fifteen U.S. cities, a very rough estimate, carefully 
focused litigation is proving to be an important way to compel good changes in 
transit systems that have proven otherwise resistant to change.  Even in the 
face of aggressive advocacy or individual administrative complaints, that is 
written complaints for investigation by the federal transit administration. 

Now, before I go on with what I just had started to say in terms of this transit 
litigation, let me just digress slightly to make sure that everybody understands 
the different things I'm talking about.  There is two different ways formally to 
enforce the ADA.  There is of course all kinds of advocacy we can do that aren't 
these legal enforcement tools, but in terms of legal enforcement tools, there is 
other things people have come up with, but largely there is two things that I 
just referred to.  If you find discrimination under the ADA and the different 
parts of the ADA, employment versus public accommodation, versus state and local 
government, the way you use these two tools varies, and this webcast isn't about 
the details of that, although your DBTAC's and DREDF and other resources can 
give you that information, but in general the first thing you can do -- in 
transportation, it doesn't matter which order you do them in, but one thing you 
can do and really easier is to file an administrative complaint with the Federal 
Transit Administration, and you can do that using the form and sending it to the 
address that is in the materials for this webcast. 

And all you have to do is fill it out, a thorough one with lots of documentation 
and description is going to do you better than a cursory complaint and getting 
many people to submit together is also a good way to submit complaints.  And 
even packaging them together and sending them altogether or separately, but from 
the same city. 

And then the other big tool is litigation.  In talking a lot about litigation, I 
certainly do not mean to imply that litigation is the only thing you should be 
doing or the first thing that you should be doing.  Litigation has its limits, 
and so the issue is more a nuance and a balance picture where people should 
recognize that there is a whole range of tools available to them all of which 
could be tried and different ones of which may be appropriate in different 
situations.  But it has to be acknowledged that in the area of transportation, 
litigation remains an important tool.  And it's one, as I mentioned before 
briefly, but I want to say a little more about it, that hasn't been reduced 
ineffectiveness by certain Supreme Court decisions like other areas of ADA 
litigation have been. 

For example, there is a lot of people know that ADA employment cases while still 
worth bringing, have had a rough road due in large part to defeats that we've 
had on the definition of disability.  And some cases against state and local 
government have hit difficulties related to constitutional questions of whether 
those government entities are required by civil rights laws like the ADA to pay 
money damages particularly -- money damages. 

But transportation lawsuits are largely not about money damages.  Usually 
they're about fixing the problem and they affect large numbers of people with 
the kinds of disabilities that are more difficult to dispute as fully covered by 
the ADA.  So, again, litigation remains a useful tool in the transportation 
arena. 

Let me go on specifically to things that relate to the buses.  I want to start 
with the calling out of stops which is very important and I start with it in 
part because it's easy for people to make this mistake of thinking that 
transportation issues really only affects people with mobility impairments, but 
it does affect people with lots of kinds of disabilities, vision impairments 
being a huge important area, and the calling out of bus stops is a part of the 
ADA that has been perhaps the least well carried out, although a lot of cities 
have seen improvements with it.  It also affects people with cognitive 
disabilities and a lot of people who need help orienting ourselves to 
surroundings. 

I want to give some ideas about ways that people can improve the calling out of 
stops by the fixed route bus drivers.  There is a lot of talk about how it 
doesn't happen, but how do you fix it?  One good way is to get drivers and of 
course this involves working with your transit agencies, which is always -- or 
almost always needed to improve things to work with transit agencies.  One step 
that is a first step, an important step, is getting drivers involved in 
identifying the stops.  Seems basic, but not all transit agencies do it.  And 
this gives a hint into the issue of transit operations.  A lot of times what's 
getting in the way of stop calling isn't just willful discrimination, but 
administrative problems in transit operations. 

For example, a transit agency putting out a list that doesn't match the reality 
of the bus driver.  So getting drivers involved in identifying the stops.  
Another one, giving drivers clear lists of the stops.  Further installing better 
equipment.  Now, this doesn't have to be high tech stop calling equipment, 
although more cities have gotten this.  It makes it a lot easier, but even 
transit agencies in smaller cities or that want lower tech, cheaper solutions, 
installing a goose neck mike for that driver to use such as a tour bus driver 
has so that when the driver is at a major intersection turning at a stop where 
no one needs to get out, they can call it out without posing a danger in the 
driving. 

And if these things have all been done, the main way to get transit agencies to 
improve this is progressive discipline.  That is probably the most important 
thing for transit agencies to seriously impose this on drivers who don't comply. 

One good example of improvement came in Salt Lake city when after a Federal 
Transit Administration compliance review the adapt advocates from there were 
telling us that there was a marked increase in stop announcements and 
destination announcements, probably up to 85 percent compliance, which is 
definitely not bad.  There has been litigation specifically on the failure to 
call out stops and in fact DREDF, my organization, along with fox and Robertson 
based in Denver has a lawsuit in Santa cruise, California that is moving 
forward. 

Other interesting issues over the last couple of years in the fixed route arena 
on the issue of securement of tie-downs, Federal Transit Administration, FTA, 
has come out with policy that a transit agency can make an overall decision as 
to whether or not securement is required by that transit agency.  It used to be 
thought by many cities that transit agencies were required to secure people or 
to attempt to secure people.  And of course the law doesn't allow them to deny 
transit to people who for some reason cannot be secured based on failure of the 
securement device or the unique nature of the person's mobility device. 

But the new policy was that a city can decide we're not going to require 
securements.  They always have to secure if you wish it or at least to try to; 
but some people don't wish it and those people don't need to be if a transit 
agency has made a global policy that securement is voluntary. 

Another issue that's hot is whether transit agencies are required to accommodate 
more weight on the lifts or extendable ramps than the ADA standards have 
required, which is at least 600 pounds.  And that has been litigated also and 
con tested and so far we don't have any clear legal indications that they are 
required to go higher. 

Another thing I thought was important that came out about a year and a half ago, 
is that for kneeling buses, buses that lower for passengers with walking 
mobility impairments, these features must be maintained just as lifts and ramps 
are maintained.  The kneeling features can't be ignored.  They are accessibility 
equipment, and therefore, covered by the ADA's requirement for maintenance of 
accessible features. 

And before I leave the fixed route arena, I just again want to mention filing 
administrative complaints.  You can use that form making them complete and 
sending many in.  Sending one in, ideally should be enough and sometimes is, and 
later when I talk about paratransit and other changes, I'll give some examples 
of when that's worked but a good advocacy technique is to file them in some 
numbers. 

Okay, I'll move on to the area of paratransit.  A very complicated area.  We've 
seen again a lot of problems, but definitely some improvements from lawsuits, 
also from FTA compliance reviews and in some cases from other reasons, such as 
the investigative reporters in St. Louis and other things as well. 

We've seen some big lawsuits, for example, in Chicago where an FTA compliance 
review showed a huge rate of denying paratransit trips where it was found that 
the transit agency had placed a daily limit Otto tall number of trips.  Their 
software was actually programmed to stop taking reservations once that limit is 
reached.  That's definitely illegal.  Paratransit is entitlement and if you are 
eligible, you get as many rides as you want.  Riders were facing a daily race 
for rides, constant redialing to get passed the busy signals.  All reservations 
for the next day were gone by 9 a.m. the previous day, and I talk about Chicago 
where there has been movement by the way.  This finding was something like a 
couple of years ago, but I talk about it to give a sense of the kind of problems 
that some cities are still having.  It should of course be said that there are a 
lot of places that don't have those problems and there is also places where they 
have some of them and not others.  One thing about pair transit is it is really 
different everywhere and there are so many different things happening so we see 
a variation in the kinds of problems. 

I will say this:  The federal transit administration of the Department of 
Transportation, FTA, has good policy in the area of trip denials.  The policy is 
that paratransit trip denials that are within control of the transit agency are 
illegal.  In other words, denials that come from transit agency decisions, such 
as budgetary decisions, if they have not enough vehicles to provide rides, if 
they have not enough drivers, if they have not enough reservations capacity, not 
enough phone in lines, these are budgetary decisions and paratransit agencies 
and the transit agencies responsible for their functioning do advanced planning.  
Transit agencies as a whole do, and they do demand predictions and they should 
be using state of the art best practices to anticipate demand and to provide 
adequate capacity, enough drivers, enough phone lines, enough vehicles is 
paratransit capacity.  They should be providing enough capacity to meet demand.  
And if these capacity decisions are what's limiting good service, those kinds of 
limits are under this legal theory of FTA illegal. 

What does it mean for a problem, a denial to be out of control of the transit 
agency and therefore not discrimination?  That means something like if there is 
an unexpected transit strike by personnel.  If there is, say, a big power outage 
affecting telephone service.  If there is a major freeway accident, if there is 
a very significant weather-related event.  These are the kind of things that 
cause trip denials are not considered violation of the ADA by the transit 
agency.  I'm sure you can see the difference.  One is foreseeable, one is not. 

You often hear transit agencies stating their denial rate in numbers that seem 
small.  They'll say we have 1 percent denials or 2 percent denials.  And 
advocates often feel that denials are much higher than that, and yet the transit 
agency will brandish documentation or what have you supporting their 
calculations.  And something that DREDF has been working with a lot in the last 
five years I would say is to really help everyone understand and we're trying to 
do it in the disability community and also in the transit industry that even 
when in good faith a transit agency makes this kind of calculation, the number 
is actually higher than it sounds.  It's not an accurate measure of the impact 
on people with disabilities.  In other words, if a transit agency says we have a 
2 percent denial rate, what that would seem to mean is that an eligible rider 
calling 100 times would only get denied twice.  And it's actually very often far 
more denials than that.  There is a lot of reasons for that that have to do with 
the nature of paratransit operations.  So people should keep in mind when you 
hear those numbers, it often doesn't reflect the true situation.  Disability 
advocates know that, but for very specific reasons, advocates can be stating to 
their transit agencies to FTA or to anyone that for a lot of reasons relating to 
the administration of paratransit, there is a discrepancy between even a good 
faith number and the reality. 

Now, I'm not sure how much time it makes sense to go in and tell you all those 
factors and line them out.  So if people are interested in me saying what they 
are, maybe go ahead and ask a question about it and if there is interest in it, 
I can add those details during the question and answer period. 

AARON:   Marilyn, we actually have some questions on that that have came in.  
So I think it might be good to at least address them in a little more depth. 

MARILYN:    Okay, all right.  I'll go ahead and do that now.  It is a lot of 
material, so I'm going to try to do it kind of briefly, but it is interesting 
kind of to see why those things are off. 

First of all, violations of the quote-unquote one hour window, the ADA allows 
transit agencies to negotiate if the paratransit rider wants to go at 1 p.m., 
the transit agency can legally give them a pickup at 2; but if the earliest ride 
they can give you the 2:30, and you accept the ride, that should legally be 
counted as a denial because it was not within the hour.  And a lot of transit 
agency don't count those as denials. 

That one really is a good faith issue.  I mean, good faith counting would count 
those as denials. 
These other things really are more in the administrative and operational arena 
as I was mentioning before.  The second factor is often in calculating denial 
rates a transit agency will average in subscription service.  Of course 
subscription service is when somebody is going to work and they need to go the 
same time every day and come home the same time.  So the transit agencies give 
subscription service meaning they pick you up at the same time and take you home 
at the same time every day instead of making you call every day for each ride.  
You're just assumed to be picked up say five days a week or whatever the 
schedule is.  Subscription service is, generally speaking, a cost savings for 
transit agencies, but they are legally limited by how much they can provide 
because you have to save some capacity for spontaneous riders or one time 
riders. 

Anyway, if transit agencies calculate denial and they average in subscription 
service, obviously there is fewer denials in subscription than there are in 
other service, but when you average it over all riders, the average rate goes 
down and it doesn't affect the average rate on nonsubscription riders which is 
higher. 

A third factor is not giving a return ride.  In some cities, it's not uncommon 
for somebody to be given a ride to their destination, but they don't get their 
ride home.  It may be promised but there is a problem with it or whatever.  
People may just try their best and take the ride to their destination even if 
they can't be assured a ride home and that certainly must be considered a 
denial, but not always recorded that way by the agencies. 

A fourth factor is discouraged demand.  It's a little bit like how unemployment 
figures are calculated.  They don't calculate the people that have stopped 
looking for work.  Similarly, with paratransit, if service is so difficult that 
people in essence have given up even trying to get certain rides, there is no 
way for the transit agency to count that, but for the rider, each time they 
don't call is in a sense like a denial in terms of the impact on our lives. 

A fifth factor is long hold tiles, and in some cities people say 5, 10, 20 or 
longer minutes of hold when they try to call in to arrange a ride.  And 
certainly the riders that hang up in frustration, the transit agency has no way 
to record and they're not reflected in that figure. 

I list a sixth factor as dispatcher problems.  There is a lot of anecdotal 
evidence of retaliation by paratransit staff or just people who are having a bad 
day or just otherwise failed to provide efficient telephone service.  Now, some 
cities have good ride arranging, but not providing.  But in other cities, even 
arranging the rides is -- even denials is from lack of staff or turn over or on 
what have you. 

And a is of seventh factor is contracted service.  When they contract it out to 
other entities so that it's actual operations are further and further away from 
the transit agencies, contractors and subcontractors may have significant 
incentive to report to the transit agency that service is better than it really 
is.  Even transit agencies that tend to monitor their fixed route service for 
efficiency really well often do not monitor paratransit very well, especially 
when it's provided by subcontractors. 

And this is how the denial rate can also be skewed.  Sometimes one of our 
advanced questions in fact asked about contracting and whether it's okay at all, 
whether we think that it's bad to contract out service.  I'm sure the transit 
agency would be doing it itself, the one -- the fixed route agency that's 
ultimately legally responsible for paratransit. 

I would not say across the board contracting is bad.  It is a necessary reality 
in many places.  There are a lot of locations where transit agencies really 
aren't in a position to conduct paratransit operations themselves and in some 
cities you would not want them to.  So I'm not comfortable making an across the 
board statement.  Now a lot of contractors are problematic, and what has to 
happen here is advocacy, enforcement, et cetera.  Contracting can work, and 
what's needed is all the kinds of advocacy tools we've said leading to a transit 
agency keeping as close a tabs on the contractor as they would on service they 
provide themselves. 

Okay, let me move on from this issue of denials and denial rates and just talk 
about some other things that are happening in the paratransit, including 
enforcement actions.  There are two very important pieces of litigation right 
now over paratransit denials.  One -- and other issues, too, but very 
significant over denial rates in paratransit.  One in Philadelphia, a lawsuit 
fairly well known.  Steve gold, the adopt lawyer that's done a lot of other 
important ADA litigation, has brought that suit, and also in Rochester, New 
York.  Both of these cases are now on appeal.  There was an argument actually in 
the Philadelphia case not too long ago, and the outcome of these cases is going 
to have repercussions I think across the country as to whether the appellate 
courts uphold the district court decisions, both of which were very favorable to 
people with disabilities, not experiencing a high denial rate having transit 
agencies provide all the rides that are requested by eligible riders.  And in 
connection -- which can also be talked about as next day service.  And in 
connection with that, many of you may be aware from DREDF's action alerts that 
last summer in the roch Esther, New York case which as I said is on appeal now 
in the second circuit, the court had asked the Department of Transportation to 
interpret its ADA regulation to clarify basically if it really means everyone 
when the regulation says that people who are paratransit eligible are legally 
entitled to paratransit rides if requested the previous day.  Does that really 
mean everyone?  Are there loop holes?  Can we say a percentage of next day 
riders, even if it's a high percentage?  Is there an out?  And DOT's brief to 
the court was a firm answer, yes, it means everybody.  And that was a victory 
reinforcing the requirement that transit agencies must quotas the regulations 
state, must define, fund and implement a next day service to meet the 
foreseeable demands of all ADA eligible individuals, unquote.  Actually that's a 
quote from the brief filed by DOT on this issue, not from the regulation, but 
it's in essence the same requirement. 

There had been fear that DOT would equivocate or provide loop holes that further 
encourage nationwide weakening, but with the help of many advocates out there in 
the community, many of you may have made some of the calls or sent E-mails, and 
also with the Department of Transportation secretary who also helped us when the 
ADA was in Congress, thanks to the advocates and to secretary Minetta, this 
brief did not introduce additional loop holes.  People can read that brief on 
DREDF's website, DREDF.org, and you can easily find the transportation victory 
with the second circuit brief. 

Another important paratransit victory of a different kind was one -- I believe 
last year -- by people in Baltimore.  The Maryland disability law center which 
is the Maryland protection and advocacy organization filed what I've been 
describing as a good advocacy technique, a mass complaint over significant 
lateness and other paratransit problems.  And in response to this massive 
complaint, FTA can scheduled a compliance review that same year.  And Memphis 
did something similar the year before.  So that leads us to FTA's compliance 
reviews.  You may have heard about this.  The federal transit administration has 
funded about six paratransit compliance reviews every year where they hire 
consultants to go to -- into the transit agency ideally to talk to people with 
disabilities as well, although I don't know that they always do that, but to 
exhaustively look at the operations of the agency and really look at what's 
happening. 

DREDF is not familiar with all of the consultants who do these reviews, but we 
know some of them, and we know that some of them are very good and are telling 
the truth about the problems that are happening and the solutions that should be 
undertaken, not just the result.  In other words, pick people up on time or 
whatever, but operational steps of how to get to the results. 

My sense of some of these reports, and again I haven't seen them all, but the 
good ones that I have seen, while they may be mildly worded, in other words, 
they don't have dramatic conclusions that a disability advocate might make, you 
know, using sort of dramatic words about the gravity of the problem, but they 
are in a more detached academic sense they are accurate about the percentages 
and about the difficulties that large numbers of people experience. 

I don't know that every compliance review is effective, but we have seen them be 
effective.  In Salt Lake city as I mentioned one was effective.  In St. Louis 
one was effective.  New York city had one of the earliest reviews and advocates 
reported in the wake of that review for the next year or two or three, they did 
not see significant increases, although since that time through litigation there 
appears to be improvements. 

Okay, let's move to some other paratransit areas.  A really important area to a 
lot of people is the issue of eligibility, who is eligible for paratransit, and 
I bet a lot of you are experiencing a trend in changing from -- excuse me -- 
changing towards in person assessments rather than just written applications. 

Also something of a trend, not quite as broad, but something of a trend towards 
conditional eligibility, that is trip by trip eligibility whereas instead of 
saying that a person is eligible for paratransit period or not eligible and 
those being the only possible outcomes, more transit agencies are saying that 
individuals are conditionally eligible for certain trips and not others. 

They may depend on the weather, it may depend on where you're going.  It 
certainly will depend on the disability. 

These changes in and of themselves are not illegal, although the results need to 
be legal.  The results need to comply with the ADA minimum standards for 
eligibility which are complex and which we will go over in the training, but 
they boil down to saying that you're paratransit eligible if you can't use the 
fixed route system.  It gets more complex than that but that's the basic 
concept. 

One tip on eligibility determinations that you're encouraged to put out to your 
clients and people in your community is that one problem that people are having 
now in in-person assessments is that applicants may say their primary 
disability, limited mobility or limited vision, but they're not saying secondary 
disabilities, such as disorientation or fatigue or balance problems that people 
may have in addition to their limited mobility.  And those kind of things could 
make the difference in terms of an eligibility decision for somebody. 

It's good if disability organizations can reach out to people with disabilities 
in their communities to offer assistance to new applicants going through 
eligibility determinations.  And if -- even if there is no organized program, 
individual advocates can offer assistance or people with disabilities can seek 
advocates' assistance to prepare for their eligibility determinations. 

Now, some disability organizations are themselves conducting eligibility 
determination on contract with their local transit agency.  There has been what 
I would have do call legitimate disagreement about this practice.  Some 
advocates have felt to do this puts their organization in an awkward position at 
best.  They don't want to be in a position of denying eligibility to people with 
disabilities who may look to the same organization for advocacy.  They may 
perceive it as a conflict with their mission.  But I spoke recently with at 
least one ILC in a smaller city, not one of our largest U.S. cities where the 
atmosphere was somewhat different and the ILC is conducting eligibility 
requirements. 

There are other changes in eligibility, in Los Angeles which has had both a lot 
of problems, but also a lot of interesting ways in which paratransit has been 
better than other places in the country.  They're even trying a system where 
they come to your house with a mobile office in a big vehicle to assess you, 
instead of dealing with getting paratransit to give you a free ride to come in 
and get assessed. 

There is a disturbing trend in eligibility that we really don't like at DREDF.  
I'm not sure exactly what to do about it, although we can bring more cases, but 
there is a disturbing trend for the enforcing authority, whether it's FTA or the 
courts, to accept the results of a transit agency's eligibility determination 
that someone may have contested.  They accept the result if the transit agency's 
appeals process was procedurally acceptable without reviewing the content of the 
refusal.  In other words, a person applies for paratransit eligibility.  They 
get denied.  They appeal the denial, and their appeal is denied.  What one court 
and what FTA itself did in processing a complaint was they looked at the appeals 
process and if it was procedurally acceptable, in other words, it was decided by 
a different person than the original decision, there was adequate time bing, 
adequate notice, the individual the chance to make their own arguments, there 
are a number of procedural requirements, if those are in place, the enforcer not 
even looking at whether the actual person should have been eligible in terms of 
the facts of about their disability.  Now, I can understand that paratransit 
eligibility determinations are highly individualized and it does involve perhaps 
an exhaustive fact-based investigation to second guess the transit agency, but 
DREDF's view is certainly that these investigations should be undertaken, and 
we're not happy.  We certainly do not think that for an appeal process to be 
procedurally correct is tantamount to nondiscrimination.  They can still be 
refusing someone that should be eligible. 

Another trend that we're seeing over the last few years in paratransit is 
transit agencies that have previously provided better service in some way than 
the ADA requires, cutting service to the minimum level required by the ADA.  
We've seen this in Norfolk, Virginia, in Philadelphia, and a lot of places.  And 
sometimes -- for example, in areas like -- or I should say in issues like, for 
example, service area.  The ADA's requirement is corridors that mirror the fixed 
route bus routes or the rail routes.  But many times a city has just said, well, 
our whole transit agency, everywhere the bus goes in terms of like drawing a 
circle around the bus route map, everywhere is covered for paratransit service 
area, cutting back just to the corridors, or if eligibility was looser, really 
cracking down on eligibility. 

A lot of times, these changes are accompanied by a transit agency inaugurating a 
better than ADA paratransit service for a higher price and stripping drown basic 
ADA services to the ADA required minimums.  For example, in Chicago they have 
so-called -- well, they have ADA service and then they have so-called premium 
service.  These are often being called premium service where they have realtime 
scheduling like same day on demand scheduling rather than next day.  And where 
we have more subscription service than they're legally required.  The ADA 
requires transit agencies to limit subscription service to 50 percent of their 
capacity at they particular time of day.  So Chicago has offered premium service 
with additional subscription service because there is more people that wanted it 
than they were allowed to give it. 

In Akron, Ohio, we also saw this where they were giving a premium service with 
wider eligibility.  People who were not eligible under ADA guidelines, but they 
may pay more than what's allowed on ADA rides, which is normally double.  Los 
Angeles is also moving towards a premium service for same day rides although not 
completely, and those plans are still being worked out.  Seattle of course has 
had this for a while, a premium service, Norfolk, Virginia was considering this 
last year.  So that's definitely a trend, not a welcome one, although a legal 
one if it's carried out in a legal manner.  And FTA is requiring that when 
transit agencies make significant changes in their paratransit provision, they 
have to go through public input process with a public hearing, with notice to 
people with disabilities, and there is a number of measures in the ADA 
regulations that you can find that are listed in DREDF's ADA manual, which you 
can contact DREDF about purchasing.  We're always eager to get those out.  
People that have been to DREDF training, our manual, we call it the "Bluebook", 
if you have those, please don't make copies of them, they are copyright, but 
they do list these public input requirements, so the paratransit service can't 
just snap their fingers and say we're making this change.  They have to take 
your input in a variety of ways. 

So if they do that, it is legal to make these changes as long as they don't cut 
service below the minimum allowed by the ADA. 

A couple off they are pair transit-related updates -- soon I want to get to 
where we're taking some of your questions.  Los Angeles actually has a feature 
that you may want to advocate for where you live.  When I first heard about it, 
it was popular.  I haven't heard an update since then, but this software enables 
the transit agency to offer what they call call outs.  About a quarter of riders 
were accepting this feature.  What it means is that you get an automated phone 
call when the vehicle is five minutes away or less from picking you up. 

One other thing I'll mention here -- well, actually a couple of other things.  
One interesting episode that happened in paratransit, this was reported on 
recently, in actually a newsletter that is a very good source of information for 
those of you interested in transportation, it's called transit access report.  
It's a little bit expensive.  It's geared I think more for transit agencies and 
law firms.  I think it's in the vicinity of 300 dollars for a subscription.  
It's an eight page newsletter very professionally done and good journalism in 
the sense of accurate and in-depth.  And if people are interested in that, I can 
say -- after the question I can say a little more about it.  Actually why don't 
I just say a little more about it.  I can do that easily.  Sorry for the 
digression, but this may interest people.  Transit Access Report.  Subscription 
service, here is a phone number for it 202-835-1770. 

Anyway, recently in transit access report, there was an interesting episode that 
was reported regarding, again, Los Angeles.  Always a place where things are 
happening in paratransit.  A paratransit rider who was suspended from service 
for abusive behavior.  The individual apparently filed an administrative 
complaint with FTA, and what happened is that FTA did not contest the right of 
the transit agency to suspend this person.  The agency showed a good number of 
documented cases where the individual had engaged in very inappropriate verbal 
abuse of staff.  FTA stated the transit agency could not do the suspension 
without providing due process.  An appeal process and other procedural 
safeguards that in the past have been interpreted by FTA due to a pattern of no 
shows or to a person appealing an eligibility denial.  For FTA to extend these 
due process protections for someone suspended for other reasons -- that doesn't 
happen often -- there aren't a lot of transit agencies suspending people because 
they are disruptive, but if they are truly, significantly engaging in behavior 
that would get someone ejected from the bus as well, paratransit can suspend 
them as well.  They deserve this appeal process and other procedural safeguards 
and I think that does constitute FTA's extending rider's rights, and it's some 
evidence that these individual written complaints to FTA are useful as advocacy 
tools.  And remember, you have that complaint form on the website.  FTA has 
other times found discrimination where a transit agency has to change something 
that they're doing. 

While we don't see as widespread changes from these complaints as we do from 
litigation, we do see changes sometimes and we see as I've said before when many 
complaints are made, FTA sometimes schedules a compliance review in that city.  
So these complaints are definitely worth doing. 

Last thing on paratransit that I want to mention from a completely different 
vantage point is not something addressed by the ADA, but just a comment I want 
to make because I think a lot of people on this webcast today are probably 
transportation advocates, and it's just something that you might want to have in 
the way you think about paratransit.  Paratransit drivers are generally paid far 
less -- I think I can probably say are always paid -- I've never heard where 
this isn't true -- paid far less than drivers of the fixed route bus on a job 
that really is not that much less demanding of skill.  And good analysts of the 
overall paratransit in our country have observed, people I trust have object 
severed that if there was pay eastbounding quit for paratransit drivers, 90 
percent of our problems would go away.  So it is a point of advocacy that you 
can use with your transit agencies. 

I could talk about updates also in the area of rail.  You know, the subway and 
so forth, other trains, light rail, and also in privately funded transit with 
for example over the road buses and greyhound and airline shuttles, but I think 
I want to take a few questions.  Maybe I'll just do one thing on airline -- 
airport shuttles. 

These are, of course, generally private services and a lot of them have not had 
accessible vehicles, and this is a problem that had not had immediate attention 
in the first years after the ADA, but it was often a very big problem in many 
cities where people with mobility disabilities could not get to the airport.  
Whereas our nondisabled friends and neighbors could get them easily. 

The Department of Justice within the last year I believe it was or maybe a 
little more than that made a very important settlement -- by the way, for 
privately funded transit while it's the Department of Transportation regulation 
that imposes the requirements on privately funded transit, it's the Department 
of Justice and not Department of Transportation that is the enforcer.  So if you 
have complaints about privately funded transit, like greyhound or airport shut 
that wills are privately funded run by a company rather than by government 
money, you would make your complaint to the Department of Justice.  Anyway, DOJ 
had a lot of complaints on a company called super shuttle and they pursued super 
shuttle and had a settlement that we really need to make a model in the 
industry.  It required them to have more accessible vehicles, more training, to 
have contracts for overflow service if they ran out of accessible vehicles, to 
gather data on timeliness and to come back to DOJ in 18 months for another 
confer.  And they had to display disability, nondiscrimination policy statements 
in all their vehicles and mention their accessible service on near telephone's 
prerecorded messages and included in all their ads.  So that was a very 
interesting settlement and the DOJ's website has good material on that 
settlement, if you just got to DOJ's disability rights section website and use 
the search for super shuttle, you will find it. 

Aaron, maybe we should take some questions and I can -- if we run low on them, 
which I doubt, but I can talk about other privately fund or rail updates in that 
case. 

AARON:   Well, we've been inundated with a lot of really good questions and I 
think that's testimony to the quality of our speaker and most of them very 
responsive to elements that you've hit on.  I want to assure anybody who wants 
to continue to send us questions, to do so.  If we cannot answer them during the 
live presentation, we will make sure that we will answer your concerns directly 
via E-mail. 

I'll just commence with the first one.  The this is somebody from Los Angeles 
who talks about how good the service they have been receiving that they've been 
receiving same day service, but there has been some recent proposals to separate 
same day from next day service as a measure to cut costs, and their concern is 
if the transit provider implements this plan, what assurances will people with 
disabilities have that there will be same day services? 

MARILYN:    Well, little, because the ADA does not require same day service.  
This has been a very important struggle in Los Angeles, and my understanding is 
that where things are right now is that the transit agency is still in the 
process of working out how this is going to look and has not made a final 
decision, but my understanding is that they intend to retain some same day 
service as part of their regular service but not for everyone.  It's a difficult 
problem.  It's an advocacy problem, although I don't know -- it would take an -- 
it may be -- I have the sense any way that it would take such an extraordinary 
amount of political pressure in Los Angeles to keep next day service -- excuse 
me -- same day service for every paratransit eligible person.  Although perhaps 
the community can generate that.  That would be great.  Short of that, it won't 
be there, and since the ADA doesn't require it, there isn't any assurance, but 
what I do recommend to advocates there is that they keep up the pressure as a 
way of maintaining a commitment from the transit agency that there will be some 
next day service and perhaps work with them and press them on exactly how that 
next day service will be provided, not only for a premium, like for a higher 
fee, but perhaps within the ADA service that's limited to the ADA fee.  In other 
words, what I'm saying is pushing to make the transit agency clarify in writing 
what next day components will be because if not in writing, it will be hard to 
keep it.  And I just thought of something that I want to throw in even though it 
might have been a little more appropriate earlier because it's something that I 
forgot. 

And that is another technique and LA can use it, but anybody can use it.  
Another good advocacy technique is the use of small claims court.  Small claims 
court, which all our communities have, and which -- well I shouldn't say that, 
which all urban areas have.  We all share that people in rural areas of course 
have less public transit and less of all the amenities available in urban areas, 
and there has been a lot of creative advocacy in rural areas by groups to 
provide equal civil rights in rural areas.  But anyway, all urban areas have 
small claims court and they have nothing formally to do with the ADA.  Small 
claims courts from state to state vary in exactly how they operate, but some 
advocates have had good luck using small claims court with civil rights 
violations.  It's easier to file in small claims court than it is often to bring 
a more significant lawsuit in state or federal court.  And some advocates are 
getting people who have paratransit problems to file in small claims court and 
get maybe 500, 750, 1,000, 2,000, you know, dollars, whatever the small claims 
court allows and if many numbers of people do it in a particular city, it's a 
form of advocacy with the transit agency that can compel change. 


AARON:   Hello? 

MARILYN:    Yes. 

AARON:   I'm sorry, I think my mike cut out.  That's an interesting option 
available.  Would you say mainly because of California or do you think it's 
something more universally available? 

MARILYN:    Well, I've heard a lot about it in California, I'll acknowledge 
that, but I would suspect that there are many states where small claims court 
would provide an interesting advocacy tool to people not only in transportation, 
but in other areas of disability rights. 

AARON:   Well, you've given me an idea --

MARILYN:    It's another creative advocacy technique. 

AARON:   We have another question that was asked early on and it's kind of a 
diversion from some that we've had.  Here is an individual who uses a wheelchair 
and is partnered with a service animal, a dog who is highly trained, who 
actually wears a medallion and who had sought ambulance service and was denied 
access for the service animal to accompany her in the ambulance and the question 
is does the ambulance fit in the scheme of transportation in the application of 
the ADA? 

MARILYN:    Well, first of all, it should be stated that one of the ADA 
requirements is that service animals are to be taken on -- in public transit 
vehicles whether privately or publicly funded.  I don't know of any exemptions 
for ambulance service.  There is different kinds of ambulance service.  There is 
emergency ambulance service which I'm going to service.  If somebody is use it 
for an emergency service and they don't take your dog, I don't like it, but you 
know, I don't know that it makes sense to make any -- I want to look closer 
before I make overall statements about it, but certainly ambulances are also 
used in paratransit or medical transit in some interesting ways.  Ambulances can 
be used sometimes as a contractor in paratransit service.  They can be used in 
some cities, paid by Medicaid, to provide service.  In other words, your ADA -- 
there is more paratransit in the world than ADA paratransit.  In other words, in 
many cities there is ADA paratransit and then there is other kinds of private 
providers that have nothing to do with the ADA that is also providing 
paratransit.  So if an individual is eligible for some kind of Medicaid funded 
service ambulances may be used. 

They're not subject to the ADA requirements of fares and capacity constraints 
and things like that, but they're still subject to basic provision of service 
requirements including service animals.  I can't think of any good reason why 
nonemergency -- perhaps even emergency ambulance use, but certainly nonemergency 
ambulance use, I can't think of any reason why they would be exempt to take 
service animals.  I think they are covered and I think people should use 
enforcement techniques to bring that to bear.  Remember though that if 
complaining about a privately funded transit provider, which ambulances often 
are I believe, you would make a complaint with the Department of Justice rather 
than the Department of Transportation. 


AARON:   Okay, the next question regards people with persistent mental illness 
who have been systematically denied access to paratransit services and the facts 
go down essentially like this where an individual who has been determined 
eligible before had been reevaluated or evaluated for the first time in this 
manner and had been administered it looks like a physical and a cognitive exam 
and based on that they made the decision that -- or the transit authority -- or 
the eligibility authority that this person could tra verse a fixed route and was 
therefore ineligible for paratransit services and the concern is the 
relationship of the cognitive test to the ability of the person to actually 
traverse a fixed route and traverse it with other people and then the typical 
conditions of a fixed route service. 


MARILYN:    Yes, that's a really important question and it raises the issue of 
pair transit eligibility determinations for -- oh, I don't know -- for 
difficulties that -- excuse me -- for disabilities that are not the traditional 
ones that paratransit eligibility administrative offices are expecting to see in 
our most skilled in assessing.  People with psychiatric disabilities is one 
example of this one but important one.  There could be any number of reasons why 
a person with a psychiatric disability is eligible for paratransit in the sense 
of how it is meant by the ADA, which is that they can't take fixed route, but if 
eligibility determinations are only administering assessment that is look for 
cognitive or physical, presumably also vision, impairments, they are completely 
missing other kinds of impairments that may make a personnel ineligible for 
paratransit because they're unable to use fixed route service.  The writer of 
the question is right and it should be.  This raises another issue about these 
eligibility determination, the determines that are the trend.  They have to be 
done properly, and there is -- there are best practices in inperson assessments.  
There are places transit agencies can go to learn.  There are trainings that are 
conducted at various transit institutes -- Pittsburgh was a city that pioneered 
functional evaluation for paratransit eligibility and also has pioneered a lot 
of -- and has been most aggressive of the cities I'm aware of in getting people 
to use fixed route.  Often -- maybe I don't know -- too forceful ways but in 
some good ways, and people from there and other consultants have been involved 
in training to really learn about best practices in these eligibility 
determinations.  It is a complex challenge to do these properly and transit 
agencies need to be learning how do them properly.  The questioner wrote about a 
circumstance in which they weren't being done properly and so it's an advocacy 
point to make sure that all people with disabilities are getting a fair shake 
from these eligibility determinations. 

AARON:   I just got handed a whole other sheet of questions.  I'm sure we 
won't get through them in the remaining 15 minutes or so, but again I'll assure 
everybody, continue to send them in as late as 3:30.  We will make sure to get 
back with you individually. 

The next question is do other paratransit systems across the country have 
problems with subscriptions, for example, removal without consumer knowledge or 
removal from the system due to a location change within the same system and what 
are the implications? 

MARILYN:    Give it to me again. 

AARON:   I guess they're asking generally about the quality of services and 
are people -- in your awareness -- are people experiencing problems being bumped 
from systems without their knowledge, from eligibility systems without their 
knowledge of removal from the system due to the fact that they have relocated 
but within that same system. 

MARILYN:    I see.  You mean something moves and then they're bumped from 
subscription service? 

AARON:   Or they just fined that they're being bumped without no --

MARILYN:    Service is not Adrienne entitlement under the ADA.  A transit 
agency may need to take that away from you for some reason.  It's not -- again, 
there is not an entitlement to subscription service, but they should give you 
notice and you are still perfectly eligible to request a ride each day, which 
theoretically must meet the exact same standard, although we know functionally 
it won't.  Subscription is a better deal and that's why people want it. 

I don't know if this exact problem has been encountered often.  I don't remember 
hearing about it personally, but that doesn't mean it's not out there.

AARON:   Okay.  The next question regards -- I guess the reasonableness of 
certain reservation issues.  If a rider is certified on a previous day 
reservation to paratransit, calls to make a reservation for the next day 
service, if she receives say a pickup time of 7 a.m. and the system there 
operates under half an hour time of arrival performance window, can is the 
contractor who is taking the reservation then call the rider back later that 
same day and inform the rider that the scheduled pickup time is now 7:45 now and 
not the negotiated time of 7 a.m. 

MARILYN:    This is a hot issue and there has been a lot of problems because 
there are so many -- there is first of all the initial one hour window and then 
transit agencies impose a pickup window and it can end up meaning that you're 
picked up at 6:30 for a nine o'clock work start, start of work say.  And it's 
too bad that the ADA talks about pickup time.  It would be better if we had 
arrival time because transit agencies could operate more efficiently.  You need 
a pickup time because it's in the ADA, but a lot of times it could be more 
efficient if they just talk about arrival time. 

I would have to say that moving a pickup time would need to be counted as a 
denial by the transit agency if the time to which the agreed upon time is 
changed to is more than an hour from the time originally requested. 

AARON:   So even if their own performance standards are less than an hour? 

MARILYN:    It depends on which way they go.  If I want a ride at 1 and you 
want to give me a ride at 2 and a contractor calls me back and says 2:30 and the 
difference is more than an hour and a half.  If what I wanted is 1 and what you 
offer is 2 and I accept it, and then they call back and say we'll come at 1:30 
that's closer to my request, that's within an hour of my request, and so that 
one hour window I would have to rely upon as being the operable principle, but 
the transit agency needs to have one hand talking to the other because the 
contracting agencies probably doesn't even know what time you requested.  They 
just know what time you were given so if a 45 minute change compounds a time gap 
of an hour already -- you may accept it and that may be all you can accept but I 
think it should be counted as a denial.  A significant number of denials 
constitutes discrimination if the denials are in control of the transit agency 
in terms of their providing capacity. 

AARON:   We've got a question regarding trip denials and the inquiry is how do 
you know if it's in the control of the transit agency?  For example, this 
questioner has been told they will get a return trip and then don't get picked 
Anned the agency will say they were a no show. 

MARILYN:    Well this is an example of the kind of thing that is he happening.  
We say they didn't show up and we say you didn't show up.  These are people who 
know the ADA requirements will know that there are six service criteria which 
paratransit has to meet and one of them is no capacity constraints.  Capacity 
constraints are things like lots of missed trips.  I would call that amissed 
trips.  Lots of trips that are really long, lots of denials and so forth.  Even 
thinks that are not stated in the regulations like the ones I mentioned but are 
capacity constraints like lots of excessive hold times, patterns of these are 
illegal, and when it happens once, there may not be a whole lot you can do about 
it, but when there is a pattern of it happening you can bring an enforcement 
action and also advocacy, you know, document these events.  
And take it to the transit agency and say, look at all these denials we're 
having.  We'll go to court if you don't fix it, what have you.  There is a whole 
variety of both enforcement and other advocacy techniques people are using.  I 
don't have like a magic answer of what you can do if this happens one time to 
you.  It's horrible and frustrating and shouldn't happen.  It is happening, and 
people need to do advocacy if it's happening very much to try to change the 
practice. 


AARON:   Okay.  The next question these individuals had I guess an accessible 
sporting event and a number of people wanted to use the paratransit.  Of course 
there were not enough seats for the amount of people who wanted to go for the 
large amount of numbers of people with disabilities who wanted to travel to the 
same place at the same time.  Is there anything that they can do? 

MARILYN:    They can bring an enforcement action.  Transit agencies are 
supposed to anticipate demand.  This doesn't only mean in 04 we expect X. 
callers a month.  In other words, general demand estimates, it also means 
particular events.  If there is going to be a big sporting event, if there is 
going to be the Olympics, if there is going to bing something known that lots of 
people will go to, a county fair or something like that, that should be part of 
planning, and additional paratransit capacity should be put on for a foreseeable 
event.  That's in contrast to the unforeseeable event, such as, you know, 
hurricanes or something, significant weather events or significant power outages 
or things that are completely unpredictable.  Or a crowd gathering when 
something was not anticipated more than a few days in advance could be something 
where the transit agency could not greatly increase their capacity, but if 
something is scheduled well in advance that is a major public event, I believe 
that FTA is regarding that as something that the planning should take into 
account. 

AARON:   Here is a question I guess that also is profiling the unique service.  
It sounds like the what hoo transit service has a couple of routes that are 
community access routes and they tend to be sort of across between fixed route 
and paratransit.  As they leave the transit centers on the hour, but will 
deviate from published routes to serve passengers with disabilities door to 
door.  And they ask if anyplace on the mainland has anything like this that 
you're aware of? 

MARILYN:    Yes, these fixed route deviation services are being used somewhat 
more in small cities, and they bring unusual problems with them that we have 
found.  And I mean people are welcome to contact DREDF, E-mail DREDF at 
DREDF.org if you have more specific questions, but we are seeing more of these 
services.  We encourage people to be involved enough with the transit agency to 
anticipate these kinds of changes so they can be involved in structuring how 
disability service will be and you know what will be allowed and what will be 
denied. AARON:   Okay, we've got several questions regarding paratransit 
equipment and mobility aids, size of wheelchairs, et cetera.  I'll try to group 
them together.  Addressing the 600 pound issue a bit more, there are several 
people significantly over 600 pounds when you factor in their wheelchair.  The 
question here is are you saying that at this point it's okay to deny them 
access?  And what rights do the transit provider have to ask the weight of the 
person with their equipment? 

MARILYN:    Well, some advocates argue that from an equal protection 
perspective as a legal argument, transit agencies do have to carry passengers 
whose combined weight is more than 600 pounds.  We do not yet have any ruling 
from any court or federal agency stating that is required and we have statements 
that it does not.  So I certainly cannot say that it is required.  Regarding the 
question, I presume this must be on paratransit.  If somebody does not know the 
weight of them plus their chair, I would say that it is -- I would not say it's 
legal for someone to be denied a ride because they don't know how to answer that 
question and then they don't send the vehicle.  In a circumstance where if they 
did send a vehicle the person could ride it because it was less than 600 pounds 
-- I don't like the idea -- I'm disturbed by the idea of a question denying 
somebody transit.  Sometimes from personal experience it can be a difficult 
thing to find out how much you and your chair weigh.  Wheelchair accessible 
scales are not --

AARON:   Common. 

MARILYN:    -- are not common.  That's right.  And sometimes it's hard to 
access them.  I don't like denials based on an inquiry in this realm, but I 
think if there is denial of service because of the combined weight, I cannot say 
that that's illegal. 

AARON:   And I guess another point here from another question is the 
wheelchair one of their paratransit patrons is substantial and exceeds the 
manufacturers specifications on the lift that the paratransit provider utilize 
es and it has caused the lift to break on two occasions.  The paratransit 
service has not yet denied services, but they're searching for suggestions. 

MARILYN:    Well, one good thing that I read recently is that the national 
traffic safety administration new standards for lifts are going to require them 
to carry more weight.  So new lifts in the future should carry more weight.  
This has typically been the way things evolved.  For example, before the ADA 
there were still a lot of accessible buses.  Many cities had some of their buses 
accessible.  The dimensions on those lifts were sometimes too small for 
particular wheelchairs and the ADA regulations required a lift size that was 
bigger than some cities had.  And now ADA compliant lifts are larger than the 
preADA state of the art.  And so things evolve in this way.  Now, that doesn't 
help cities that have present equipment that isn't functioning.  Short of 
retrofit, I don't have a lot of ideas.  Now people who know more about transit 
operations than I do -- DREDF works closely with people who are expert in 
transit operations but there are a lot of complex questions and you have to be a 
professional in that to know and that's why when we do in-depth training we 
always work with someone who is an expert and they may have more to say.  These 
people could be asked.  I think it's great if a transit agency is not denying 
people.  What the agency should do if it's aware of a problem is test their 
lifts and, you know, can send particular vehicles to get particular individuals.  
Although I can't say that is required by the ADA.  It's a good faith thing that 
transit agencies may wish to do. 

AARON:   Okay, I know we're kind of up against the wall actually in terms of 
time.  We have -- I would say at least 15 more questions.  Do you want to 
address one more? 

MARILYN:    I'm happy to address more. 

AARON:   This one is pretty good.  If there has been a previous incident of 
what the agency considers potential violence, can the agency require the rider 
to come with an attendant?  If the agency feels the person needs an es court, 
can the rider require the agency to provide the es court as an accommodation? 

MARILYN:    Certainly it is legal under some circumstances to do that and I'm 
just turning to my source material because, you know, you can't memorize 
everything. 

AARON:   No doubt. 

MARILYN:    And I want to actually get the standard.  Yes, this is what we know 
from the regulation.  It's not discrimination for a transit agency to refuse to 
provide service to an individual with a disability because that individual 
engages in violent, seriously disruptive or illegal conduct.  However, the 
transit agency may not refuse to provide service because the individual's 
disability results in an appearance or involuntary behavior that may offend, 
annoy or inconvenience employees of the transit agency or other persons.  And --

AARON:   I think for their example here this one is specific. 

MARILYN:    Let me go to the thing about attendants.  This is kind of a follow-
up to that.  No transit agency may require that an individual with a disability 
be accompanied by an attendant.  However, an individual with a disability -- 
however, if an individual with a disability engages in violent, seriously 
disruptive or illegal conduct and may be refused service on these grounds by the 
transit agencies described above, the agency may choose to provide service under 
the specified condition that an attendant accompany the individual to mitigate 
the problem.  So they can require an attendant only if the exclusion of the 
individual from transit at all would be legal any way under the standard that I 
read from the regulation. 

AARON:   But it has to be based on more than their perception of a possible 
risk. 

MARILYN:    Well, yes, although I think --

AARON:   The direct threat. 

MARILYN:    It's not exactly the direct threat.  The words in the regulation -- 
because direct threat is usually -- well, you're right, that direct threat can 
be in either direction, the words -- it's kind of like direct threat, but it's a 
little bit different.  The statement is violent, seriously disruptive or illegal 
conduct.  If a person engages in that, if the transit agency can show they did, 
then they can require an attendant, and the regulation draws the line between 
that category and inconveniencing transit agency staff or other people due to 
your appearance or characteristics of your disability. 

AARON:   Okay.  I think we're going to have to call that a close on the 
questions and I promise that we will get back with those questions and I want to 
thank Marilyn Golden again.  I think you've been outstanding and I think a test 
amount to that is the amount of really quality questions that we got and some of 
which we haven't gotten to. 

MARILYN:    Thank you, Aaron.  It was lots of fun. 

AARON:   I want to remind everybody that of course as always today's 
presentation will be archived on the ILRU website and we encourage you to review 
that.  It takes us a couple of days to get that up or maybe more.  I want to 
encourage everybody to review our calendar of upcoming webcasts for 2003.  
Recall of course that this is a first part of a two-part series with Marilyn 
Golden.  The second being transportation and the ADA, providing 
nondiscriminatory service and fixed route and paratransit which is going to air 
Wednesday, February 12th, starting at two o'clock central time.  So I also want 
to further encourage you guys to again to review our archive of past webcasts.  
So check it out.  At ILRU.org.  Click on webcasts. 

We also would love to have your feedback.  So if you could please fill out the 
evaluation form on the website, we'd be most appreciative.  We'd like to improve 
our service, we know there is room for improvement.  I want to again thank 
Marilyn Golden for her time.  I want to thank NIDRR for funding our entire 
project and of course this effort.  And I want to state of course that this 
webcast would not be possible without the efforts of our ILRU in-house staff, 
which includes Marj Gordon, Dawn Heinsohn, Rachel Kosoy, who I'm meekly filling 
the shoes for today, and the technical expertise of Rob Dickehuth and our 
realtime captioner, Marie Bryant, who has to put up with my rapid speech.  I 
want to wish everybody a good afternoon and again encourage you to come and 
check out the website and again participate in the February 12th presentation 
with Marilyn Golden again.  Everybody take care.