1 ADA Paratransit: On-Time Performance and No Show/Late Cancellation. Part II of a V part series. Presenter: Marilyn Golden. >> JACQUIE: Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to today's webcast, ADA Paratransit: On-time Performance and No Show/Late Cancellations. This webcast is being presented by Marilyn Golden being sponsored by the National Institute on Disability Rehabilitation and Research, NIDRR, who funds your host for today's program, the DBTAC Southwest ADA Center. I'm your moderator, Jacquie Brennan, and I'm with the ILRU project Southwest ADA Center. I'll be assisting with today's presentation. Before we get started, I just want to remind our listeners that you can submit questions during this webcast by just clicking on the E-mail button on your screen or you can E-mail them directly to webcast@ilru.org. If you should have any technical difficulties today, please feel free to give us a call at (713)520-0232. And, again, thanks for joining us today. I'm pleased to present our speaker today, Marilyn Golden. And I want to remind the listeners that the way that Marilyn and I work this on questions is that she will stop every once in a while and ask me if I have any questions so I won't be interrupting her as she speaks, but she'll stop 2 and ask for questions and is always great about taking all your questions. So Marilyn, with that I'm going to turn it over to you. >> MARILYN: Thank you, Jacquie. Yeah, I'm Marilyn Golden with the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, National Law and Policy Center based in California with the Governmental Affairs Office in Washington D. C. and I'm really delighted to have the opportunity, thank you ILRU, the DBTAC Southwest ADA Center, for this opportunity to present today the second of five once a month webcasts on ADA transportation. Today we'll focus on two important topics in ADA transportation -- excuse me in ADA paratransit, on-time performance and no shows, late cancellations. First I want to go over your materials list and make sure you know what you have here. Number one is a report from the National Council on Disability co-authored by DREDF called The Current State of Transportation for People with Disabilities in the U.S. We have the HTML version and the PDF version so whichever is more convenient for you on NCD's website. That was a report that really brought up to date by giving all the information we had since the ADA regulation in 1991 in terms of new policy from the federal agencies, best practices, realizations, important considerations up until the time when this report was written and sent off to NCD in I believe 2004. And we'll look at that a lot today. The second material is DREDF's ADA Transportation Outline which we'll look at a little bit and it is a good resource for you. A lot of best practices and other things are in there in addition to the requirements. 3 The third item is called Som ADA Transportation Resources which you can download by clicking on it, and that's a DREDF leaflet I'll go over very briefly now. It talks about DREDF training on ADA transportation and other parts of the ADA. You can find out more about that by contacting me. We're always happy to work with your budget on that. The second thing is DREDF's ADA training manual, the ADA Implementation Guide which is a great resource giving a lay description of -- in clear lay terminology of all the requirements of the original ADA and with instructions on how to obtain it. The third is the report I just described which is number one on your materials list, and the fourth thing is worth looking at for a moment. The ADA website of the Federal Transit Administration or FTA can be found at a quite simple web address, www.fta.dot.gov/ada and it has a lot of important things on it. It has DOT's ADA guidance, FTA's ADA complaint form, the rider complaint form, some very good FTA ADA compliance reviews about paratransit and other things which are very detailed reviews of certain city's transit agencies and what FTA thinks may be ADA compliance problems and what should be changed. Very interesting reading for ADA transportation advocates. And you can also encourage FTA, if you like, to do a compliance review where you live by being in touch with them and you can also get good perspectives on what may or may not be appropriate in terms of your own location. All the ADA regulations and standards relating to transportation can be linked from there and there is other various useful links as well. Going a little further down in your resources, No. 4 is that FTA rider 4 complaint form that you can access right from the ILRU website so people are encouraged to click on that if you want to fill out this form and submit it to the Federal Transit Administration Office of Civil Rights if you think there is -- if you find -- if you suspect there is disability discrimination going on in terms of the publicly funded transit where you are, whether it's fixed route, bus or rail or paratransit, that is your way to make a complaint. It's easy to do to fill this out. You want to be thorough, but it's a great way to get your issue before FTA. It costs nothing. It takes little time, only the time for you to write a carefully written complaint and include all the information. Five and six are things I'm going to talk about when I make announcements. So let me go ahead and go over some quick announcements I want to give you that relate to our subject today. First, I want everybody to know about the ADA Restoration Act. And I encourage everyone to look at the DREDF website page which is 5a in your materials list here. The ADA Restoration Act is the bill that would correct the terrible Supreme Court decisions on the definition of disability. Although this problem has not significantly affected ADA transportation, it could and it is also a very important issue for the disability community as a whole and really for anyone who cares about the ADA. On that DREDF web page if you scroll down to resources on the ADA Restoration Act which is the third major heading on the page, or at least it was the other day when I last checked, there are some short handouts that can give you a good understanding of the bill. And then you are 5 strongly encouraged to go see your congressional delegation and write them letters that you support this bill and why. The second website listed in 5b, which is a blog on the ADA Restoration Act from AAPD, that is the American Association of People with Disabilities, and on that website you can see other resources, including the list of House of Representatives cosponsors. We have 234 at least. Even if your Congress person is a cosponsor, it's important that they hear about your support so they do not support any weakening amendments on this bill. And I want to bring your attention to one other federal bill. This one directly affecting transportation, and that is in material 6 that's listed on the ILRU page. You will see that bill is the Over-The-Road Bus Transportation Accessibility Act of 2007. It hasn't been renamed quite yet, HR 3985. And again this is material No. 6 listing the website to this page on the DREDF website. This bill -- the subject matter of this bill is the problem of the private inner city bus companies without stations known as curbside carriers that ignore the ADA. These companies which use high floor over-the-road buses and offer budget fares along the eastern seaboard and across the country do not provide accessible buses and have frequently ignored the ADA by, for example, denying transportation to blind people with guide dogs or requiring them to sit in the last row of the bus. The purpose of this bill is to get the U.S. Department of Transportation or DOT to consider the ADA when it grants and revokes operating authority to these companies. This bill passed the House in 6 December and we hope to see Senate action on it soon. Okay, let's move in to the subject matter at hand. I want to start with on-time performance in ADA paratransit and I want to direct you to -- in material 1, that National Council on Disability report if you can use the pdf, that's great, the html is also there. If you're using the html version -- actually, let me start with the pdf -- no, start with the html. If you're using the html version, simply search for on-time performance. That's on-time-based performance. The first time you find it, it's the table of contents listing for that section. So click on that table of contents listing and you'll get to the section. And if you're using the PDF version, go to the page labeled 61. It's actually the 63 page. But in the report the report page is labeled as page 61. I'll go through some sections in this report and as I do I'll add some things that I've learned since the report came out. Of course one of the most frequent complaints in ADA paratransit in many cities is the chronic lateness or sometimes undue earliness, but in any case, problems with on-time performance. And as I move into page 62 and I'm not going to say everything here, but if you look around you can follow along with me. The ADA regards substantial numbers of significantly untimely pick-ups to be in a legal capacity constraint. Untimely can apply to an overly early pick-up or arrival which could be considerably earlier than a passenger is ready or wants to go. Just as it applies to an overly late one. Sometime it is alleged that to be in compliance a transit agency must be achieve a particular percentage of trips within a certain arrival 7 window, but compliance also needs to consider how systems schedule and dispatches trips. I want to move into factors that affect on-time performance and the issue of on-time performance is actually very complex. There is a lot of different factors that affect it. And so what this report tried to do is separate all these factors from each other so we could have in a sense a clear conversation. So I'm going to go through the factors one by one. The first factor I'll talk about is the importance of the desired arrival or appointment time. Some transit agencies have imposed a rigid one hour window that the DOT ADA regulation gives without regard to the passenger's desired arrival time. The result can be just as problematic, again, if it's significantly early as late. Because, for example, if somebody arrives 90 minutes too early for work during harsh winter weather before the building is open, that's not okay. And my understanding is that -- or at least we hope to see that the industry is moving and also FTA moving to a position where no more than a half hour early would be too early. That would be a best practice at this point anyway. Moving on in the NCD report, a lot of compliance reviews are quoted really showing -- compliance reviews from the FTA really showing that the FTA has made many determinations that not considering a person's needs on arrival or their appointment time is inconsistent with the ADA which really conveys the FTA's view that you have to consider them to comply. For example, suggesting a 4:00 p.m. pick-up from work knowing that the person works until 5 would certainly not be in keeping with the concept of paratransit being comparable to the fixed route system. Similarly, 8 offering a 9:00 a.m. pick-up if a person requests an 8:00 a.m. ride to get to work by 9, similarly is not an equal transit option compared to the fixed route system. And in the next paragraph, for many passenger trips the timeliness of the drop-off can be more important for many times than the timeliness of the pick-up. If you have appointments to work or school or medical appointments or recreational events, and this is being quoted by a letter from the FTA Office of Civil Rights that having too many of these would constitute a capacity constraint, a capacity constraint in turn is something that is illegal under the ADA transportation regulations. A later FTA compliance review made the point even more strongly by questioning whether it's consistent with the ADA for a transit agency to offer only one pick-up time even if it is within an hour of the requested time because that offer is not a negotiation. So that suggests anyway that in some cases you have to have a real negotiation, not simply the transit agency giving a single time and that's the end of the story. The next factor I want to talk about is the issue of the on-time pick-up window and we have seen the industry moving and FTA moving in the direction we think of saying that a greater -- a longer pick-up window than 30 minutes is not necessarily appropriate in terms of the ADA. Then we move to another factor which is the negotiated pick-up time versus the schedule time. And that's on Page 64 of the PDF and it's the next heading. And what this means is that the transit agency gives a pick-up time to the rider, but then may make changes in that pick-up time 9 without notice to the rider. The negotiated time given to the rider is very important and it needs to be protected in the system. The transit agency should notify the rider of any changes that they may make in the time, and FTA by the way in compliance reviews have found this. Because if FTA has made that finding, that is in essence saying if they've made it certainly multiple times, that is in essence saying that it is part of compliance with the ADA. Now, somebody may ask why would they change my pick-up time without telling me? Well, changes sometimes occur without notice to the rider because the paratransit service is using a computerized system that changes the time to make the driver's printed schedule conform to certain other things in their system. For example, if negotiated time is 7:15, the driver might be told 7:30. It's important because the individual who expects say a 15 minute arrival window may go outside to wait for the vehicle at 7:15. At 7:30 they assume the vehicle isn't coming and the rider goes inside. The vehicle arrives at 7:35 and the driver records the rider as a no show when in fact the rider was present according to the information he or she was initially given. Schedulers will also put more trips on the schedule than can be managed or do not allow as much time for a pick-up as is needed or may overbook to avoid having denials, or may overbook to compensate for same day cancellations, just assuming that it will work out because somebody will cancel. But if the cancellations don't occur, or if they occur at a time or place that doesn't lend itself to serving the overbooked trips, the system is going to run late. 10 Contracting with a backup provider such as a taxi company to step in and provide these overbooked trips is a best practice. And that can be very effective to serve trip requests that can't be accommodated on the transit system's dedicated vehicles. The next factor I want to look at is trip length. And the issue really here is what is excessive length? When is a ride too long to be really legal under the ADA to not in a legal capacity constraint assuming there is many rides like that. I'll say as an aside that, you know, the ADA looks at these patterns. That's important. And so sometimes a single trip can be possibly a capacity constraint, but other times it's important to look at a pattern, and certainly a pattern of them could certainly be a capacity constraint. On the issue of trip length, we now have clear guidance because many of FTA's compliance reviews have made this determination that you compare it to the fixed route system. If a paratransit ride takes a lot longer than the same ride on the fixed-route bus or train, you must include the additional time that would be needed on the fixed route system to get to and wait for the bus or train and to go from the final bus or train stop to your destination. So if all of this put together is significantly longer than the fixed route system, that may be too long. For example, if the total fixed route time is 60 minutes, including the time on each end of the ride to get to and from the bus or train stops, a paratransit trip that is 20 or 30 minutes longer might be considered excessive. The next factor is a discussion of some other operational issues in providing paratransit that can affect on-time performance. For example, a 11 lot of fixed route services like on the bus have spare drivers, but often not in paratransit. Sometimes in paratransit there is enough drivers to cover what they call schedule-outs which means vacations and other absences known in advance, but not enough to cover same day absences or sometimes spares are available to be called in from home -- spares are available to be called in from home on an as-needed basis, but they are not scheduled spares who are really available to cover runs on the day of service if some expected driver is absent or late. So there is all kinds of discussion here. There is all kinds of ways that inadequate driver backup can cause lateness and it is a best practice for the transit agencies to systematically fix all these problems and ultimately to have the same degree of backup that they have on the fixed route system. Also, if the system pays the paratransit contractor on a per trip basis for the number of trips performed, but simultaneously gives scheduling responsibility to that same contractor, that contractor will often try to perform more trips than it really can provide properly. So if a pay per trip contract is used, transit systems need to be very thorough in monitoring service quality, particularly on-time performance and on-board ride times. And the last factor is factors outside the transit agency's control because there absolutely can be factors that the transit agency cannot do anything about, such as abnormal freeway congestion or abnormally poor weather or unexpected road construction that can cause delays. So when you consider all of these together, you can see why on-time performance is a complex thing, and that they can sometimes add up in a way to make an 12 extremely significant burden on passengers, sometimes to a degree that I think transit agencies may not always completely appreciate. And this report has an example that it quotes and I'll go through it. If a rider needs to be at work at 9:00 a.m., they might reasonably request a pick-up time of 8:00 a.m. for a trip of average length or a short one. And this was actually the Rochester system, but if the system applies the full two-hour scheduling window, whether it can be an hour before or after the time you want to be picked up, that means it could be a pick up of 7:00 a.m. or up to 9:00 a.m. So with -- let's say they have a 60 minute maximum ride time policy. It's possible that the rider could be offered a 9:00 a.m. pick-up time, ride for 60 minutes and not get there until 10. So the rider thinks to themself in order to guarantee a 9:00 a.m. arrival, I'm going to have to request a 7:00 a.m. pick-up time, one hour of scheduling flexibility plus an hour to ride. So if 7:00 a.m. were requested, a pick-up time as early as 6:00 a.m. could then be offered by a system that wasn't really following the best practices that we've talked about. So in this example, and really this was true in many systems up to a few years ago and I think still true in some and perhaps many, you could force somebody to arrive either an hour late or two hours early for work or for a medical appointment, which is really a very burdensome scheduling issue that certainly outweighs any scheduling issues on the bus. So it's important to appreciate and understand why these additional determinations and best practices are important. There are some other operational practices that can enhance on-time performance that the report talks about, and one is that the agreed upon time should appear on the 13 driver's manifest, the driver's list of their rides. And by the way, this has also been an FTA determination that the agreed upon time should appear because then if there is a disagreement, at least the driver knows what the agreed upon time was supposed to be. A second important operational practice is consistency of daily tours, as much as possible keep them consistent whether or not you are talking about subscription riders and subscription riders certainly should be consistent, assigned to the same driver every day without additional trips squeezed in, sending drivers to unfamiliar areas. Driver input on the scheduling configuration should be taken seriously by the transit agency because often it's the drivers who know best how the schedule can be made to work better because it helps them, too. And it's important also for transit agencies to take seriously the guidance provided by their software companies or their other staff in terms of these daily schedules. Another really important operational practice is monitoring. On-time performance in paratransit should be very thoroughly monitored not only on paper, but actually spot checking pick-up and arrival times at known destinations. It should go beyond relying on contractor reports. Careful monitoring of paratransit is very important, especially when the service is contracted out to private providers which is exactly the time when monitoring is not provided as well as it would be on say the bus where the transit agency is providing it itself. Some transit agencies can provide what are often being called call-outs where if you have certain technologies the transit agency can have its software generate an automated phone call when the vehicle is five 14 minutes away or less from the pick-up location. It's a very popular feature with riders when it's done properly. It's available -- it's more -- far more easily available if the transit agency has certain kinds of information technology and did you -- I'm going to just go real quickly to page 105 in the same report. We're going to just very briefly mention the names of these technologies. One is called Automatic Vehicle Locator or AVL, the other is Mobile Data Terminals or MDT's, and particularly large city agencies have these. They are tying in a global positioning system that allows them to monitor the location of the paratransit vehicles in realtime which can be very, very helpful because it provides a great way to monitor drivers in terms of what is really happening. And the driver also ideally has Mobile Data Terminals which means drivers can all along their route record their arrival and departure times and that is seen by the transit agency so they can revise the schedule and flag late pick-ups and drop-offs and reassign later trips and all kinds of good things that make things run better and even notify passengers of possible delays so people can reschedule. That is a lot of what I wanted to say on the issue of on-time performance. Jacquie, why don't we take some questions. Hello? >> JACQUIE: Okay, we have a lot of questions. >> MARILYN: Oh, good. >> JACQUIE: One person says there was a lot of discussion about pick-up windows, can you define what a pick-up window is? >> MARILYN: That's a good question because there is actually two windows and one is in the ADA regulations and one arguably isn't there at 15 all and is extra legal but it's become customary. So the ADA -- the scheduling window is that if the rider requests a certain pick-up time, the transit agency, according to the regulation, could offer a time -- was required to offer a time within an hour. And that has come to mean either early or late, which in a sense is two hours. And that is of course that allowance has now been tempered by all the FTA determinations that I went through considering the appointment time or the arrival time, considering having a true negotiation and so forth. Then there is a second window. There is the window that happens in the sense that let's say your pick-up time is 8:00 a.m. Well, naturally you can't expect a vehicle to arrive exactly at 8. So a window is given that, for example, perhaps an agency will say because some agencies have this window that the transit -- that the vehicle will arrive somewhere between 15 minutes to your announced pick-up time or 15 minutes after, a total of 30 minutes. The transit agency may say you should be outside for that 30 minute period and then once that's over, you know, the transit agency's vehicle is late. And that's the pick-up window. And as I discussed, if the transit agency changes your scheduled time and you don't know it, your perception of what the pick-up window is is different than theirs and that's why the consistency in the pick-up window is important. And it's important that the pick-up window not be, say, an hour because that's really unnecessarily long and really contributes to a terribly poor on-time performance. We really don't want to see those as greater than 30 minutes. >> JACQUIE: Okay. This is from a transit agency in Louisiana. 16 We allow two no shows per calendar month and suspend the rider for one week for the third and subsequent no show. Additionally, we require riders to provide a two-hour lead time in cancellations or the cancellation is counted as a no show because that ride may not be able to be used. This prevents last minute cancellation and encourages the rider to pay close attention to their schedules. Pertaining to your comments on on-time pick-ups, traffic patterns often cause delays in the pick-up time. Normally we're within 15 minutes after or 15 minutes early of the scheduled time. We require riders to be ready 15 minutes early, but we won't drive off if they are not ready early, but five minutes after the scheduled time we will drive off and call it a no show. And there is not really a question connected to that, but do you have a comment about that? >> MARILYN: Well, let me save the portion with no shows and late cancellations to later in the webcast when we address those topics. But in terms of the description of the pick-up window, I think that sounded like it was pretty consistent. I mean, it is important that the vehicle arrive -- that the vehicle doesn't arrive within the established window, it is certainly true that traffic can cause lateness, although the kind of congestion that can cause lateness that is typical for, say, a region of your city needs to be taken into account by the transit agency. If it's really unexpected lateness that happens rarely for an unexpected reason, yes, it can throw something off. And one late arrival is probably not a violation of the ADA. You know, it's a significant number or a pattern or what DREDF would propose is something that is under control of the transit 17 agency. But the idea that it's a 30 minute window -- I would say in terms of waiting for the passenger for five minutes, we look to something that we weren't going to go into too much on this call, but I'll just throw it in because it relates here. A lot of transit agencies have this policy that they'll wait -- if they come within a pick-up window they'll wait five minutes. And then they will leave, and if the passenger isn't there to be picked up in that time, that is a no show. I think that's largely fine, but there are passengers for whom that is legitimately a significant obstacle. I know of a rider who is blind whose transit agency does not offer a call-out. They can't know when the vehicle is coming and may not -- may have other reasons why they couldn't be outside the entire time. And we look to the DOT guidance which we talked about on the last call a few weeks ago that it may be important -- it may be important to come to provide a door-to-door service even if the policy is curb to curb if due to a passenger's disability they need that service and part of that need would be to know when the driver is there. >> JACQUIE: All right, we would like to hear what other transit agencies do about their rider no show problems. >> MARILYN: Maybe we should hold the no show questions until we've gone over the no show. >> JACQUIE: Okay. Does tracking of on-time performance and cancellations depend on the software a transit agency purchases? >> MARILYN: Does the tracking rely on it does it say? >> JACQUIE: That's what it says. Does tracking of on-time 18 performances and cancellations depend on the software the agency purchases? >> MARILYN: Sometimes it does, although I think there is a myth that if you -- that if you buy the wrong software it could be the software that is to blame and not really your operations. And, in fact, DREDF thought that was the case for a time and was inquiring into what should we be advising transit agencies in terms of software to purchase. And we ended up finding out that it really wasn't about that. It was really a matter of best practices. How was the software used? Are extra rides jammed in beyond what the software says is doable? So it's really a lot of the operational things that I talked about today and that are talked about in the NCD report rather than the wrong purchase of software that is usually to blame for on-time performance problems. >> JACQUIE: And this is the last one that doesn't deal with no shows. Is there a way for passengers to access the paratransit computerized reports to keep themselves informed of any changes to their estimated pick-up times? >> MARILYN: Is there a way for passengers to access computerized reports from the transit agency in a realtime basis to know if their ride is late? >> JACQUIE: Yes. >> MARILYN: I have not heard of an agency doing that or a way to do it other than what I mentioned, which is for agencies that have AVL and the technologies I described in detail a few minutes ago, those agencies can sometimes call riders if their ride is late, but that's really the agency making the policy to do it. I think that some of the very thorough 19 agencies -- I mean I think Dallas -- some of the agencies with MDT and AVL have used that technology in other ways to avoid lateness including involving riders and I don't know the details of it. I don't know of much that riders can do in terms of a specific practice, but I do know first of all certainly if you live in a large city, you can inquire as to whether your transit agency has Automatic Vehicle Locators and Mobile Data Terminals on the vehicles. If they do, you can advocate that these practices be used to pull you into the process of determining to know when your ride is late and so forth. If they don't, you can advocate that they get it. If you're not in a big city but you think your transit agency is in a position to afford this technology, you can advocate that they obtain it. Who knows, having the disability community along side them in advocating, say, for a financial allocation for a purchase could be politically helpful in allocating the funds for that. That's probably the best way to get riders more directly hooked in to the technology is to have those systems. However, even without them, it is often very possible for transit agencies to reschedule rides after, say, late cancellations so that rides are more on time. But that's something I'll go into a little bit more in the next section. >> JACQUIE: Go ahead and move on to the next section. >> MARILYN: Let's move on to the next section. I want to move into now the no shows and late cancellation policies and the ADA paratransit portion of today. And again, in the NCD report, if you're using the HTML version, you want to search for -- and I'm not sure if you have to go back to the beginning to do your search, search for no-show 20 policies. That's no-show based policies. We've had on-time performance and so no-show based policies. The first time you find it is the table of contents listing for that section. So click on that table of contents listing and you'll get to the section. And if you're using the PDF version, go to the page labeled 73. It's actually on the 75th page if your computer counts every single page, but it's labeled 73 at the bottom of the page I'm talking about. So I want to go to 73 which if you have the report is just a few pages later than where we were. And we have near the bottom of page 73 no-show policies. The ADA allows transit agencies to suspend paratransit to people who establish a pattern or practice of missing scheduled trips or no shows; but people with disabilities will experience the same kind of unexpected schedule changes as everyone else does. The challenge of no-show policies is to balance those needs. I want to go briefly over the basic rules in the ADA regulation about these no-show policies. If you want to see something as I go through, you can find this on the DREDF transportation outline, although frankly I think it may be a bit hard to find it and we won't be there very long, but if you want to dig for it, it's material 2 and you want to find suspension for pattern of missing scheduled trips. Suspension for pattern of missing scheduled trips, but I'll be quick and then we'll be babe to the NCD report. The basic rules are these: The transit agency may establish an administrative process to suspend for a reasonable period of time the provision of paratransit to people who establish a pattern or practice of 21 missing scheduled trips or no shows. Trips missed by the individual for reasons beyond his or her control including trips missed due to transit agency error may not be a basis for determining that a pattern or practice exists. So notice trips missed by an individual for reasons he or she could not control are not allowed to be the basis for a suspension. Before such a suspension, the transit agency must notify the person in writing, citing specifically the basis of the proposed suspension and setting forth the proposed sanction. In other words, what specifically were the no shows, when and all that, and setting forth the proposed sanction, in other words, what is the punishment going to be? The appeals process described -- oh, there is an appeals process which is available -- must be available to the individual. And the sanction or the suspension is stayed depending the outcome of the appeal. If you appeal, you continue to ride until the appeal is decided. Now, the rules for the appeal process that are clearly given in the regulation are that the appeals process -- and there is others but I'll just hit the big ones -- must include an opportunity to be heard from the individual and for them to present information and arguments. The decision must be made by somebody uninvolved with the initial decision to suspend the person. And written notification of the results must be provided with reasons stated. Now, I just want to say something about appeals. Very often people are hesitant to appeal, and appealing is very important. So people are encouraged to make these appeals if they think the suspension is not accurate, if they think it's unfair, if they think that it violated any of 22 the rules that I've talked about or that I'm going to talk about. Okay, back to the NCD report, exactly where we were on Page 74 in the PDF and under that no-show policies heading in the HTML down in the second paragraph. A lot of transit agencies say that you will be a no show if -- excuse me -- you'll be suspended if you have three no shows in a 30 day period. I think the example of the agency that wrote in that was read earlier on this webcast was two no shows. I don't remember if it was 30 days but it may have been. However, FTA has said that this stringent of sanction may be an unreasonable limitation of the ADA service with language that suggests it's a capacity constraint and therefore an illegal policy. And FTA's letter about this that is quoted here stated the following: Considering only three no shows or in this case six cancellations in a 30 day period to be excessive and an abuse of the service may unreasonably limit service to ADA eligible customers. Yet a lot of cities have that policy. These policies need to be reconsidered in the light of FTA's view that this may not constitute a sufficient showing of pattern or practice. Moreover, no show suspensions may be imposed only when the rider's record involves intentional, repeated or regular actions not isolated, accidental or singular incidents. This is language from the DOT's regular language which interpreted it and it's very interesting because it shows that it's not appropriate if suspension is applied for an accident or singular incident or two singular incidents, but really for intentional, repeated or regular actions. So this leads us to another interesting conclusion. If a rider travels to and from work five days a week, and let's say they miss several 23 trips a month, they no show several times in that time, this is a frequent rider. Well, that's a lot less of a regular or a repeated action than if the rider missed the same number of trips, but they only traveled once or twice a week. So the frequency of use or the percentage of trips missed should be considered when determining pattern or practice. And FTA has adopted the position a number of times that trip frequency should be taken into account in establishing the level for suspension of paratransit service. For example, basing no shows not on the number of trips taken but the percentage of trips taken is something agencies should be doing. They often don't do it because it's not as convenient for them to measure the percentage as to measure the absolute number of no shows, but it really is a more true measure of whether it's a pattern and whether it's repeated. And so that's something FTA has found is needed. Also the ADA precludes transit agencies from including in the no show tally trips riders miss for reasons beyond their control. The ADA also guarantees that customers may appeal, yet riders are not always informed of their rights to contest the particular no shows were beyond their control or to appeal. We view that any suspensions without this information being given are violations of the ADA's due process protections. Now, sometimes these rights are present on paper but not in fact and the NCD report quotes a rider who said that where she lives no shows that are beyond the passenger's control still count as no shows; but it doesn't really matter what the passenger said. Her agency hired a woman to handle complaints, but that she didn't find her to be very interested in listening 24 to the customer. This particular advocate is quoted here as saying that she had a no show that was out of her control and she called three times to document -- and she documented that she called three times, but the person never called her back so she had a lawyer who was a friend of hers call and the lawyer was told -- oh, and the lawyer told the individual that she needed to call the person which she did not do. So the advocate called again and then she claimed the transit agency staff complained that she always returns calls. This rider was penalized and she said that she knows many people that are given no shows through no fault of their own presumably despite their efforts to contest them. So you really need to be sure that a transit agency is really activating this policy that riders can contest when something was beyond their control. I know that where I live it works well and, you know, I know riders that are very sort of obsessive and calling up when the no show was beyond their control. So it's important that there be a system for that to happen. Now, there are ways to reduce no shows that do not penalize the rider. For example, some systems give rewards for not no showing, and the report gives the example of Las Vegas that at the time DREDF was doing this research and probably still has what they call a responsible rider program. That awards free paratransit rides to riders who do not miss a scheduled ride in the first half of the year. And the program complements the penalty policy for persistent no shows, and apparently that was well received by customers. So there is all kinds of other things you can do to decrease your no show rate and the report gives some others. 25 Another strategy is coordination. Because often a service agency will have several people on a schedule on a subscription basis. There will be changes in their plans and some people will go and others will not. But often the social service agency does not keep the transit system apprized of these changes. Transit systems can reduce no shows significantly if they work closely with the social service agency for which they provide subscription service or in any kind of service. And it is DREDF's understanding that by far the majority of no shows are about coordination with social service agencies and not about individual riders who arrange their own trips not showing up. Further on systems with capacity constraints, that is there still may be denials or on-time performance violations of the ADA that aren't in conformance with what I described earlier in the webcast. On these systems, a significant portion of no shows stem from riders' responses to the capacity constraints that they are trying to cope with. For example, if riders don't know that calling the day before a ride will likely result in a ride denial, they are going to call earlier and earlier. Some people will arrange rides they may not even end up taking because they have to request a ride early enough before their plans are confirmed or maybe their plans will change, and the result is an increased number of no shows. And that is why this report really recommends the transit agencies focus on the real abusers. This and other things I should say really lead us to recommend at the end of the section and DREDF's recommendation as well that transit agencies focus on the real abusers rather than establishing a no show policy that is customer unfriendly and 26 disrespectful to the average rider. Because in actual practice, it isn't the majority of riders who abuse the system. Typically, that's only a few people, and they are easily identified. Sending threatening letters to all riders who occasionally have unexpected changes in plans, which happens in a number of cities, isn't customer friendly or respectful public service. I want to move now into the other piece of this, which is late cancellations. Some transit agencies have defined a category of late cancellations that can contribute to a rider's suspension. Some have even extended the definition of a late cancellation to be any time after 5:00 p.m. the previous day or even earlier, yet FTA has sent letters stating that the regulations permit service suspensions only for customer trips that is no shows and not for late cancellations. FTA only recognizes late cancellations that are, quote, the functional equivalent of a missed trip that is a customer no show. FTA does not consider cancellations after 5:00 p.m. the day before the service day the functional equivalent of a trip missed by the customer. And a little bit later, typically a late cancellation -- this is from another report -- typically a late cancellation is one made less than one or two hours before the scheduled trip. If this definition is used, some provision should be made to allow people with trips first thing in the morning not to be penalized if they are unable to provide the one to two-hour notice because cancellation calls are not taken before they are scheduled to travel. And then back to FTA's pronouncements, FTA has stated that most systems give the rider until two or three hours before the scheduled 27 pick-up time to cancel a reservation before charging the rider with a late cancellation. Moreover, and I touched on this earlier, many transit agencies can efficiently redeploy vehicles even when same day cancellations come in. It's not like they are slated to be late because of no shows. They can often redeploy vehicles despite the cancellations and they don't need to know the day before. So late cancellation policies really should not go back farther than an hour or two. Maybe a little more before the actual ride, particularly if the late cancellation is used as a basis for penalizing riders in any way. As the no shows, a significant portion of late cancellations stems from capacity constraints in the system. Riders have safe conditions that force them to request rides earlier in their plans than they are final to ensure they can secure the ride. Something that really shows how extreme the problem can get is that DREDF has heard about public meetings in which riders have revealed that they will actually take trips on paratransit that they no longer even want just to avoid being charged with a late cancellation. This result serves no one's interest. So if there are capacity constraints in the system, transit agencies need to resolve them before they implement tough no show and cancellation policies. I want to say a couple more things about this that are not in the NCD report. And one is that transit agencies should not be canceling the return trip. There is an important FTA policy interpretation several years ago that transit agencies should not cancel the return trip if a rider does not show for the outbound trip because a person may have grabbed a ride to 28 work with the neighbor if their vehicle didn't show up during the pick-up window as we described could happen earlier in the webcast, if the on-time performance policies are not consistent and they still could easily need the ride home. So transit agencies are not allowed to cancel the return trip. Another issue is the length of suspensions. We've heard of transit agencies -- not often, but sometimes -- having extremely lengthy suspensions when people have a pattern of no shows. So to give people an idea and for example at a national transit institute training -- actually, no, at a research meeting I heard staff from the Office of Civil Rights of FTA state that a week is okay. Half a year or a year is not okay. So that gives people some guidance of the length of suspensions that should be considered the kind of thing that are a valid suspensions under the ADA if somebody really does have too many no shows. And the last point I want to make is about best practices. What transit agencies should be doing when there is a no show. Two things: One is don't cancel the return trip if it was an outbound trip, and, two, call the person. If there is no answer and it's an agency trip, call the social service agency. And then if the social service agency says, oh, she's not coming today, the transit agency should say you have to call us when that happens because it does waste transit agency resources for there to be no shows. Making these calls to somebody who has no showed is not burdensome. If the transit agency is really using best practices and on-time performance if these no shows are not really transit agency errors, then no 29 shows tend to run 1 to 2 percent of trips. Now, if a rider isn't there because the vehicle was late, some transit agencies call the riders just as they would call no shows saying where were you? We were recording -- we are recording this as a no show even though the vehicle itself was a half hour late. That's not a no show. That's -- so, in other words, this whole thing of calling somebody who no showed, if the vehicle is late, you can call them but you can't call them and claim it's a no show. If the vehicle is late, that's not a no show, that is an agency missed trip and too many of them are an illegal capacity constraint under the ADA. Okay, that is the basic material that I wanted to present about no shows and late cancellations. Jacquie, do we have questions and we can really at this point take questions on either topic, anything that we've talked about and if there is questions that you think are good questions on other topics on ADA transportation, sure, why not. We have a good amount of time for questions now. >> JACQUIE: Okay, great. The first one is from St. Louis, and it is -- could you go into a little more detail about door-to-door service? Who determines when the service should be used and how to ensure that this is an option with paratransit? >> MARILYN: Well that, is a very good question because all these paratransit factors really do tie together, and because of that I want to encourage people -- because I think many of you are right with your computers, right, and if they want to really look at this, there is a DOT guidance that came out not too long ago about one and a half or probably by 30 now two and a half years ago, maybe even three. And you can find it by going to that FTA ADA website. So you want to go to www.fta.dot.gov/ada. And that should bring you -- it did bring me to the FTA's ADA website -- the FTA's -- yes, ADA website. And if you click on -- let's see. DOT guidance. The first heading is grant opportunities. That's not it. Go to the second heading which is ADA technical assistance. The first topic is Office of Disability Rights, but the second topic is DOT Disability Law Guidance. So click on DOT Disability Law Guidance and you get a page about that with four bullets. The second one is origin to destination service. So click on origin to destination service and you should get a screen that starts origin-to-destination service. And basically the Department of Transportation has found that under the ADA service should be origin to destination. Well, what does that mean? It basically means that people really have to get from their origin to their destination, and what it boils down to -- and I don't want to go super into kind of how the policy evolved and how the way it interacts with the regulation, but if you read it and it's really just a little more than a page, what you read is you see that it's requiring that if a transit agency has a policy, transit agencies were originally given the choice of providing curb-to-curb service or door-to-door service on paratransit which is where the driver -- if your disability requires it will come to the door to assist you or if you're at the arrival point go with you to the door of where you're arriving of your destination. Or that was the door to door option or the curb to curb option is that the person has to come out to the curb to the vehicle and 31 the driver doesn't have to come to the door. Now, it's still true that transit agencies can pick which of these they do, but this guidance states that compliance with the ADA means that if a transit agency has only a curb to curb policy, they still must provide door-to-door service for a rider whose disability necessitates it in order for them to make use of ADA paratransit service for whatever reason. So transit agencies that have curb-to-curb service only should be providing this door-to-door service for people whose disabilities necessitate that for them to use ADA paratransit. Now, there are limitations. There are limitations to this rule. For example, and this is I think four -- the fourth paragraph from the bottom. It should be emphasized that this does not require a complete change from curb-to-curb service. It's also the case the transit providers are not required to take actions that would fundamentally alter the nature of the service or create undue burdens. And so there may be things, for example, if somebody lives up 15 steps, there is no elevator and there is certainly no ramp probably up so many steps, the transit agency is not required to help a wheelchair user down 15 steps, but it's usually not what's being requested. It's the case, by the way, that some half -- roughly half of the transit agencies in the country provide door-to-door service. Many transit agencies have been upset about this and stated that it's not possible and yet half the agencies in the country in fact do it. Many of them have a policy of, for example, up or down one step or curb. That's a typical policy. That's not an FTA determination. That's not required necessarily. We don't know if it's required or not. I'm giving it as a typical policy, 32 and the typicality of it suggests to us, one, what a best practice might be, but also suggests to us that it is not unduly burdensome to do that kind of thing. There can also be one time burdens. I mean, there could be individual incidents where a transit agency can't do this, but generally speaking they can. But that's the guidance, and transit agencies have sometimes said they don't have to follow this guidance. In fact, the Department of Transportation's guidance is DOT's statement of what its regulation means. It is DOT's view of what compliance with the ADA means. And so in the eyes of DOT, the Department of Transportation, and in the eyes of FTA, which is a part of DOT and which will enforce complaints and do compliance reviews that affect this practice, they will enforce consistent with this guidance. And so that is what the enforcement will be, which as far as DREDF is concerned, it tells us that that is what the ADA requires. >> JACQUIE: Okay. The next one is from New York. When a customer is sent information saying that they will be suspended, how long must be allowed to respond to this notice? Can little time be allowed? In other words, a notice be sent to the customer saying the customer no showed X. number of times and is suspended as of five days later unless they appeal? How long must be allowed for a customer to check into the dates mentioned and get back to the transit entity before the actual suspension date? >> MARILYN: There is no specific guidance on that that I am aware of, although there may be some FTA compliance reviews that have addressed that question. If FTA is listening and there are, they might 33 want to call in and tell us, but I would say that if a transit agency has a policy that a person cannot meet and let's say they were out of the country on vacation when the notice came, and you know when they get back the number of days the transit agency gave them has elapsed and they say I want to contest these no shows, I want to appeal, can the transit agency then say, no, you've lost your chance? I feel relatively confident that if the scenario that I described was sent to FTA as a complaint, they would say the transit agency does need to consider that person. Five days seems awfully small to me and certainly, you know, people need to -- the transit agencies need to make reasonable rules here and they need to consider extenuating circumstances on the part of individuals. >> JACQUIE: Okay, is it inappropriate for an agency to implement suspension when a passenger cancels because of poor or bad weather conditions? >> MARILYN: Could you repeat that? >> JACQUIE: Sure, is it inappropriate for the agency to implement suspension when a passenger cancels because of poor or bad weather conditions? >> MARILYN: Well, this raises the question of a late cancellation. We know that riders can question no shows that were beyond their control. Since a late cancellation is really in a way a permutation -- it's a specific type of no show, it's a no show where a passenger cancels, but how soon do they cancel? Then we have to read in the rules of no show they would apply. And if that's beyond the passenger's control, then it shouldn't be counted against them. And 34 weather is certainly beyond their control. So if they're canceling due solely to weather because there is something about the weather that is, say, a disability that is affected by heat, and there is an unseasonable heat wave that would be deleterious to the individuals' health and they need to make a late cancel or something of that ilk, that should be contestable under the ground that it's not within the control of the rider. >> JACQUIE: This one is from Virginia. Are transit agencies required to notify passengers if they are going to be late? I waited for a ride for two and a half hours with no word from the provider at all. >> MARILYN: They are not exactly required to notify the rider that they will be late. The way the ADA controls this is in a different way. It's not -- and by control I don't mean the ADA has complete control, but the way the ADA offers a control of this problem is different. You know, one could arguably say it's not as good and somebody could argue back that notifying people may not be possible or if we do it -- regardless the way the ADA does it is to establish a rule that it's an illegal capacity constraint if there is a significant number of untimely trips such as the lateness -- certainly the lateness -- unquestionably the lateness in this example would -- if indeed was due to operator error. If what it says on its face is in fact true, that would certainly be a late trip and a significant number of them or any untimely trip would be a capacity constraint. Now, any pattern of these in DREDF's views should be considered to be an illegal capacity constraint. And people can file complaints. There is other ways to enforce the ADA. They can request or activate that FDA do a compliance review in their city. And FTA will be 35 urging the transit agency to shape up its policies. There is also litigation. People can file lawsuits under the ADA and while we don't encourage frivolous lawsuits, litigation has been an important enforcement tool in ADA transportation because it's not like a restaurant not providing a ramp which is such a clear discrete thing that you can maybe get them to do or that you can do something -- you can even have mediation over that, but when transit agencies are violating the ADA, it's often very complicated. There is a lot of twisted together factors and it's really hard to know sort of what's going on and those complex situations are the kinds of situations that litigation might be a better tool for. Again, we don't advocate sort of willy nilly suing but carefully brought litigation where there has been significant noncompliance in various parts of the country. Not every time, but often has really proved compliance with the ADA. So the ADA is a civil rights law. It can't monitoring everything that happens. We wish that it could, but it has to use the tools that civil rights law has and those are the ones I detailed. >> JACQUIE: This is from Michigan. Can a passenger who is consistently slow in boarding or has issues related to their disability which they have no control over be considered as a factor that affects on-time performance over which the agency has no control? >> MARILYN: Well, it's true the agency -- it's true -- well, okay, on the whole, no, I would say. Because a person who takes a very long time to board a vehicle perhaps to get out to the vehicle may well be the exactly the type of individual for whom ADA paratransit was designed to serve. People who have exceptional difficulties maybe dealing with the 36 fixed route system. So if you're talking about how the vehicle only waits for five minutes -- and I don't know if FTA has addressed the those policies, they may have or find in the future that five minutes is too short. Certainly if an individual cannot meet five minutes because of their disability, whether it's a matter of it's the winter and it takes them time to put on their coat and come out of their building and go down in the elevator and the elevator is old and all the way out to the street, for the transit agency to hold that against them is not a legitimate thing to do and I feel very sure that if such a circumstance was found to be happening, and it was complained -- a complaint was filed with FTA that, FTA would say the transit agency had to wait for that person. Certainly if the driver can see the person if they can't quite get to the vehicle they should wait. This is a good example when the origin to destination guidance to make a difference because this may be the kind of person with the driver going to the door and perhaps pushing that person if they use a wheelchair -- it could be other than that -- that could help them. There is all kinds of ways to look at that. Let's also remember that transit agencies are under a general ADA requirement to modify policies, practices and procedures where necessary to avoid discrimination on the basis of disability. Now, DOT is currently in rule-making about adding that requirement to their regulation, but that requirement already exists in a regulation that DOT and DREDF and lots of other analyzers viewed the transit agency is currently subject to. And this would be an example where modifying that five-minute policy is required because the individual really can't get there any quicker. Certainly this is the kind of individual that 37 paratransit should be trying to accommodate. If an individual can usually zip out to the vehicle, but they experience a condition that makes it way slower, it might be a good idea to let the transit agency know they are not going to follow their usual pattern of coming out quickly and they need the driver to come to the door. It's only fair that riders have some obligations, too, but generally speaking this sounds like someone who has this all the time. >> JACQUIE: Is it best practices to permit a rider to cancel a return trip from 30 minutes of the trip if they no showed the first leg of the trip? If the rider fails to cancel this trip, can the agency consider this a second no show as well? >> MARILYN: Are they saying is the return a no show as well? >> JACQUIE: It says the second leg of the trip -- >> MARILYN: No, you can't get two no shows out of one trip because the passenger -- you can't argue that a passenger has no showed for both their outbound and their return and thus it's really two no shows for one trip. The best practice is to call the rider and FTA has determined that they shouldn't cancel the return trip anyhow, but if they miss it, you know, we don't want to see a transit agency counting two no shows for a trip. That's not I don't believe consistent with the ADA regulations. >> JACQUIE: Right. Okay, short question from Virginia. If my vehicle is two hours late and I make other arrangements, is that a no show? >> MARILYN: No. If that is -- if what is described is what really happened, on its face this scenario is true, it's not a no show. That is a missed trip by the agency. There has been a significant problem 38 with this, and I think the number of questions is some testament to that. Transit agencies counting missed trips by their own error, agency error, no shows against the passenger so it's really important when is the expected pick-up time, what is the window and if the vehicle misses that window, it's not a rider no show, it's an agency missed trip -- not a violation of the ADA. Can't be held as a no show. I know some sort of researchers and consultants, you know, want a very good transit researcher and consultant that I spoke with some months ago that talked about how they don't even recommend charging no shows in these circumstances when they don't have a handle on whether it's an agency missed trip or not. Because for example if there is no AVL, you can't really know when the vehicle was there. Sometimes you're believing your drivers and sometimes that's absolutely dependable. But there is other times that's not dependable and if a driver is a low wage driver under undue stress who wants to keep her job, they are going to say they were in a place where they weren't by a certain time. And so transit agencies really need to restrict no shows to really when it is the passenger error or the passenger's control or the passenger not showing up within the time that is within the window. >> JACQUIE: With the MDT systems, have you heard any reports of drivers manipulating the system to make changes to reflect that the driver didn't make a mistake even though there was a problem? >> MARILYN: I have not heard of it, but the fact is that I am far from an expert on these high tech systems used by some of the larger transit agencies. And so I will extrapolate from my experience with stock announcement equipment on the bus which is often possible for the driver to 39 alter the system in a way that is not calling out and if the transit agency is not monitoring closely that the equipment is in good working order, the transit agency can't as they say disable the equipment. So I would bet that if transit agencies do not know effectively how to monitor AVL and MDT if they are not set up properly, staff have to be trained, and equipment has to be monitored and if staff changes it, there has to be progressive enforcement in place that is in fact carried out and good controls on not allowing staff to do that making sure the technology is set up in a way that they can't. So if the transit agency isn't thoroughly doing all of the things I said which are not technological but are procedural and administrative, that they should do, I will speculate that there could be times that could happen. And so it's important that the transit agency properly manage this technology. I do know that if it's properly handled, it should be possible to make that -- impossible for the driver to manipulate the system in that way because if it wasn't possible, these sometimes wouldn't be as effective and as recommended as they are by people in the field that we really do trust. So they can be made that it's impossible to do this, but I don't know that they always are. >> JACQUIE: Okay, this may be our last question time-wise. We may get one more in. If the transit agency shows up 15 minutes earlier than the schedule pick-up time which is still within that pick-up window, can the agency leave after waiting only five minutes or do they need to wait until the scheduled time and then wait the five minutes? >> MARILYN: The concept of the pick-up window is not that the 40 transit agency should have to wait until the pick-up time. If the transit agency is within the scheduled time, and then there is this thing that could be called a third window, which is this five minutes thing, if that is a transit agency's policy, I am not aware of that being judged by FTA inconsistent with the ADA to have the five-minute policy. They can exercise it. So I think they wait five minutes. If they are within the window, they wait five minutes and they can go. That is subject to best practices. So were they really there? Is this a situation where the person based on their disability really needs door-to-door service? You know, and then of course to the benefit of the transit agency we have to ask would door-to-door service be a fundamental alteration of what they do, but in this case maybe it was, and I gave examples earlier, so you have to ask all those questions. But, no, I would say as a rule, the transit agency is not required to wait all the way to the pick-up time. >> JACQUIE: All right. Okay, this will be the last one. According to our paratransit provider -- this is in New York -- there is a scheduling window of one hour on either side of the time requested. Then there is the arrival window of 25 minutes where you have to be outside and waiting. Then once you get on the bus, we now hear that they can even run ten minutes late from the time that they listed they will be at the destination. For the customer, this can mean a woman needs to be at work at 9. The transit entity uses a guideline of the amount of time the trip would take on a fixed route bus, and in this situation let's say an hour and 30 minutes. So that means the customer says you need to allow one hour 30 minutes for the trip, plus the 25 minutes they can run late so now the 41 trip is up to 2 hours and 55 minutes and still they can get there ten minutes late so the person has to plan for that, too. Is this the way the system is supposed to work? >> MARILYN: I see. I got most of it but I want to ask you to repeat one thing. After the ten minutes you first mentioned, talk about the time for the actual trip. The actual going of the paratransit vehicle. >> JACQUIE: Well, the first time it mentions ten minutes, it says they can run even ten minutes late from the time that they list they will be at the destination. >> MARILYN: Right. Keep going. >> JACQUIE: And then it goes into the example. A woman needs to be at work at 9. They use the guidelines for the amount of time it would take which is an hour and thirty minutes on a fixed route system. So then they say that you need to allow an hour and 30 minutes for the trip, plus the 25 minutes that they can run late, so then the trip is up to two hours and 55 minutes because it's 25 minutes on either side of the time and they can allow the extra ten minutes after that. >> MARILYN: I would say that -- I mean, first of all, New York is a special case in one sense in terms of its size, however, it still has to have policies that are consistent with the ADA and the ADA's policies are adequately flexible for them to work. And I would say the policies I've heard, some of them are consistent and some are not. For example, a one hour arrival window, no. We would have to strenuously object to anything over 30 minutes for a pick-up window. So I think that is not consistent with the ADA. It's inappropriate that a -- after all the 42 scheduling latitude allowed transit agencies that on top of that you're going to make people be ready for an hour like 30 minutes before or after or ten minutes before or 50 minutes after, however they slice up the hour, no. Now, a 25 minute -- a 25 minute pick-up window -- I'm probably mixing up the one hour and the 25 minutes. But the 25 minute pick-up window is okay. I don't think that an added ten minutes on top of any of this is okay. I don't know what that means, but you have the one hour of scheduled leeway, but you have to take into account the appointment time and a true negotiation. Remember that, so then a 25 minute window is okay if it's a pick-up window. An added ten minutes late, no. That's got to be counted into the pick-up window. So that will make it 35 minutes and that's over 30. We really think 30 minutes is the maximum pick-up window. An hour and 25 minutes for the trip if it's an hour and 30 on fixed route is okay. Because you do look at the fixed route time and I can imagine that taking the bus in New York can take a long time. So that part is okay. But that first hour I don't think so and the ten minutes I don't think so. >> JACQUIE: I agree with you on that. Okay, well, we're out of time. And I sure appreciate you taking so many questions there at the end, Marilyn. You're always so great about that. For our (inaudible) of today's presentation with your colleagues. They will be available tomorrow at ilru.org. And please don't forget to complete the evaluation on the webcast page because we are very interested in receiving your feedback. Be sure to tune in for part III of the transportation series with 43 Marilyn Golden which will be on February 13th, two weeks from today. Thanks to the National Institute on Disability Rehabilitation and Research, our sponsor for today. The opinions and views expressed today are those of the presenter and no endorsement of any of the sponsoring agencies should be inferred. And finally this webcast would not be possible without the efforts of our webcast team and Rob Dickehuth for his expertise and our captioner today Marie Bryant. Thanks for joining us.