1 ADA PARATRANSIT - PART 5 PRESENTER: MARILYN GOLDEN. >> JACQUIE: Good afternoon everyone. We're sorry for the delay. Welcome to today's webcast: ADA paratransit. This is the fifth in a five-part transportation series and so we're sad that this is the last one that we have with Marilyn Golden for awhile. Marilyn Golden of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, DREDF, is going to present our webcast today. This webcast is 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. For those of you who are listening to the webcast today to submit your questions, click on the E-mail button on your screen or you can E-mail them directly to webcast at ILRU.org. If you have any technical difficulties today, please feel free to call us at (713)520-0232, and again, thanks for joining us. Now I'm pleased to introduce our presenter, Marilyn Golden. Good afternoon, Marilyn. >> MARILYN: Good afternoon. 2 >> JACQUIE: Take it away. >> MARILYN: Thank you very much, Jacquie. As Jacquie said this is the fifth and last of the series of five webcasts on ADA transportation. Today we'll focus on ADA paratransit and in particular on topics that have not already been covered in depth during the earlier webcasts in this series. First of all, I want to go over your materials list. Many of them will be familiar to those of you that have heard other webcasts in this series. The first one is the National Council on Disability report, the current state of transportation for people with disabilities in the United States. And you have an html version and a pdf version for people who prefer to use that version. And that report really covers all the information that DREDF and our coauthor who wrote the report for the national council felt was important that we learned about transportation in general and ADA transportation since the original regulation came out. So a lot of best practice information in there, a lot of insights and some information about rulings from the Department of Transportation, DOT and the Federal Transit Administration, FTA, on the ADA. The second material is DREDF's ADA transportation outline which we'll look at some during the webcast. The third is a single page called some ADA transportation resources, and I want to go over that very briefly. The first talks about training on the ADA which DREDF offers which you can read that and see how to pursue it if your group is interested in training. Item 2 is DREDF's ADA training manual, the ADA and implementation guide, also known as the "Bluebook," which offers a detailed analysis of the law's provisions and really gives you all the information up through 3 the publication of the regulation in -- in the case of transportation that was 1991. The third item on the handout is the same one I already mentioned the National Council on Disability report, and the fourth one I want to pay special attention to, this is the ADA website for the Federal Transit Administration or FTA. And can you get to it by going to www.fta.dot.gov/ada. Pretty simple. And this FTA ADA website has many important policy resources on ADA transportation, including the regulations. It includes also Department of Transportation ADA guidance documents. It has the ADA complaint form which is also in your material list and also FTA ADA compliance reviews which are very detailed reports that FTA has very good contractors write when they examine compliance with the transportation system with the ADA and really document all the issues that they find very, very thoroughly. Those are posted and you can read them to find out what FTA is saying and advocates and transit agencies alike in particular cities have found those documents very useful. There is also, again, regulations and other links and so that's a really, really useful website. Back to your materials list for this webcast. That was the third item. The fourth item is the FTA rider complaint form. So if a person with a disability feels that they have experienced discrimination under the ADA and transportation, in public transportation, that is the bus and the train and ADA paratransit as opposed to privately funded transportation, you would not use this form. For this form, anything on public transportation, you can fill it out and send it in per the instructions on 4 the form. And the FTA Office of Civil Rights will investigate that complaint. It is an easy way to enforce your rights under the ADA. Item 5 is called bus stop improvements and I will talk about that a little bit later. 6 is called service area. It's PowerPoint slides and we'll also talks about that a little later. No. 7 is called telephone hold times, and again we'll talk about that a little bit later and No. 8 is called origin to destination service, which I think we'll have time to talk about later. And if we miss it, I encourage somebody in a question or Jacquie, if you wish, to just remind me to go back and loop that one in. So those are the materials. Let's start out at the DREDF ADA transportation outline material No. 2. I encourage you to search for the word paratransit and that section appears on Page 5 of the outline near the bottom. And we will end up giving sort of an overview, which we really haven't done in this series because we've been focusing on particular topics. Of course the ADA is a civil rights law, and that is something that we all know about the ADA, but it particularly has a special meaning when we talk about ADA paratransit. Because paratransit has the goal of providing people with disabilities the same transportation service that the general public has access to by your public transit provider. It provides the same -- it attempts to provide an equivalent service. It doesn't provide a better service. It doesn't necessarily provide everything disabled people need. One of the memorable quotes from the era back when the ADA was going through Congress, I'm proud to say it was Patricia Wright, pat Wright, 5 DREDF's lobbyist who came up with this quote. And her comment was -- and this is in no way to demean public transit, which is one of the most important services we have -- but the ADA gives people with disabilities rights to the same public transit available anywhere else. The idea being if it's great public transit, you get access to the same service. If it's poor public transit, you get access to that service. And that's what a civil rights law does is give people with disabilities or whatever the protected class is, the same service everybody else gets, but not more. You know your nondisabled neighbor may not have all the public transit they need or want, but they have what they have and the ADA gives people with disabilities -- it aims to give people with disabilities about the same. The ADA holds that it's discrimination for a publicly operated fixed-route bus or rail system to fail to ensure that paratransit is provided to individuals with disabilities who cannot use the fixed route system. And then we come to one of the first topics I really want to go into in depth, and that is that solely commuter bus systems are exempt from the paratransit requirement. The regulation defines commuter bus service as bus service that's characterized by service predominantly in one direction during peak periods, so in to the central city in the morning and out from the central city in the afternoon, limited stops as opposed to many stops, just a few stops, not all on the way. Also the use of multiride tickets and routes of extended length, usually between the Central Business District and outlying suburbs. It doesn't have to have all these things, but it's usually characterized by some of these things. 6 Commuter bus service may also include other service characterized by a limited route structure, limited stops and a coordinated relationship to another mode of transportation. Well, I want to go into this a little more closely. For example -- and I'm just going to give you an example that isn't from the public transit area. At the airport, the transportation between the rental car location and the terminal -- so you come into the airport to the terminal and you want to get a rental car, so you go out to the rental car location and often that's not very close. So you have to take a van. Well, that van system would probably get this exception because it's got a limited route structure, very limited stops, and it's coordinated to another mode of transit. So would the system that connects the parking lot to the rail station at the airport and those are just some examples, but those examples bring in all these different characteristics and people dealing with them have found that it can be difficult to figure out what gets this exception. What systems do not need complimentary paratransit. And so we really have a principle we can give you that makes it easier. A good test is whether the service, the transit service, is designed to serve the public all the way along the route over which the vehicles travel, or is it designed just to get you from the beginning to the end of the route. Fit has many stops along the way and it's designed to get to people to all the different destinations along the route, then it is not a commuter bus system, and it is required to have complimentary paratransit. But if its design is to get people from the beginning of the route to the 7 end of the route and not particularly drop them off at a lot of different places in the middle, then it is a commuter bus system and would get this exemption from providing complimentary paratransit. If a commuter bus system has the same vehicle in the middle of the day go and do a different service that is not a commuter system, for example, it comes in without stops in the morning, but then it goes out and picks people up all along the way in the afternoon, then during this latter portion of the service, there must be complimentary paratransit. And because there has been so much confusion about this, I just want to give some examples of how to apply these rules. For example, we were asked this question: We have a route that serves five communities, and it's 65 miles long. Is that a commuter system? And the answer is that it depends on whether or not there is one stop per community or many. If there is only one stop per community, that would be a commuter system. And it would not need complimentary paratransit; but if it has a number of stops in each community, then it would need to have it. Another question was: In a rural area, a vehicle circulates around an island, picking people up and dropping them off. That is a fixed route system and it should have complimentary paratransit. Now, we focus on this because this exception, this commuter bus exception from DREDF's observation is being interpreted very loosely. Much more loosely, much more broadly than it should. There is all kinds of systems that were never intended to be exempt by DOT from the paratransit requirement that has claimed this exception. So we encourage people to really look closely. For example, if in your city a service that runs infrequently, but I 8 runs throughout the day, not just into downtown in the morning and out from downtown in the afternoon, but other places, even if it's infrequent, that still would be a service that requires complimentary paratransit. So if in doubt you could seek technical assistance or file a complaint and see what FTA says about whether the service should be covered under that part of the ADA. Good. The next major topic we come to is paratransit eligibility. Actually, let me ask Jacquie, do we have any questions on the commuter bus issue? >> JACQUIE: We have some questions, but I don't think any of them are specifically on the commuter bus issue. One is about -- will still kind of fit what you were talking about, but this person wants to know what the history of response or follow up by the FTA is when individuals complete and submit the complaint form? And how often does the FTA personally call an individual to respond? >> MARILYN: Well, they -- the FTA, I would say, has been you know at times a lot quicker and more responsive than some other agencies that we have dealt with. There has been a back log. It's my understanding they that are making a lot of progress in closing that back log. We have also found some -- you know, sometimes results that really do sort of vindicate the person with the disability. We have seen action taken on these. The FTA is of course fair, but at the same time there have been some results that really do blaze good trails in terms of clarifying the requirements. So we do encourage people to use that system. The basic function is to investigate and to resolve the complaint with 9 the public transit agency. So most of FTA's communications will be with the transit agency, but my understanding is that FTA -- I believe at the beginning and the end, but certainly by the end of their investigation will communicate back with the individual with the disability. >> JACQUIE: Okay. >> MARILYN: It's also possible to call FTA, instead of filing a complaint on paper, people can also informally call FTA to talk about issues. So I really should give that number. If you want to call -- anybody wants to call the FTA Office of Civil Rights, the number that we've been given is (202)366-4018, (202)366-4018. Good, the next major topic is ADA paratransit eligibility. And we did an entire webcast on that and so I'm not going to go into that for now, but I want to mention that the webcast I did was archived on the DBTAC Southwest ADA Center website. I just checked it out the other day. I was very easy to find and it's present in both audio and captioned formats. Today I'll be very happy to address your questions about eligibility or about really any ADA transportation issue in E-mailed questions. So if you have something on those things that we've done at another time, please feel free to ask and we will review some of the material at that time. I'm going to continue with ADA paratransit service criteria, which is in your outline. Search for service criteria and that's on Page 10. ADA paratransit service must be comparable to fixed route according to six service criteria. Service area, response time, fares, no trip purpose restrictions, hours and days of service and capacity constraints. So I want to look at that first criterion, No. 1, which is service area. You 10 can stay with the outline or you can look at the PowerPoint slides that I will us trait service area and that is material No. 6. Service criteria No. 1, service area, is required to be at a minimum a system of corridors that extends three-quarters of a mile on each side of the fixed route that, is corridors that are one and a half miles wide. At the end point of each fixed route, the corridor must include an area with a three-fourths of a mile radius within the central -- and if you go past the first PowerPoint slide, you'll see a simple line drawing which is intended to be an example of the route map for a bus system. So the idea is that, again, the paratransit service area is corridors. So you go to the next slide and you'll see all the lines have green -- an outline around them forming corridors that mirror each of the fixed routes. And that is part one, really, or the first portion I'm describing of the service area. Now, in addition, within the central portion of the urban area, where the corridors around each route converge to form a solid mass, also known as the core service area, the transit agency must also provide paratransit service to small areas not inside any of the corridors, but which are surrounded by corridors. So if you go to the next slide, you see that there is a blue central set of areas filled in. Those are part of the paratransit service area, too. It's hard to describe in words, but a little bit easier if you can see the photo -- or picture. Service is required to be provided from any point in anyone of the corridors to any point in the same corridor or in any other corridor. And there is one more slide which is -- shows how outside the core service area the transit agencies can designate wider corridors, up to a total of three 11 miles wide, a mile and a half in diameter. So that is the basic minimum required service area. Go on to service criterion No. 2, the transit agency is required to schedule and provide paratransit service to any ADA paratransit eligible person at any requested time on a particular day in response to a request for service made the previous day at any time. So, for example, you can request a paratransit ride at five minutes to 5 on a Tuesday for 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday. So next day service. You can request any time on the previous day a ride for the next day. The transit agencies must make reservation service available at least during all the normal business hours that they keep in their offices as well as during those same hours on any day when their offices are not open if it is a day before a service day. So, for example, Monday is probably a service day, so they need to take these reservations on Sunday. So for example if a transit agency's buses run seven days a week but the administrative offices are only open Monday through Friday, then the reservation service must be available seven days a week so that a person who wishes to request a paratransit ride on Monday can make the request on the previous day of Sunday. The transit agency may negotiate pick up times with the individual, but cannot require him or her to schedule a trip to begin more than an hour before or after the individual's desired departure time. The federal transit agency -- FTA has stated that it's okay if transit agencies guarantee a ride, but call the rider back towards the end of the period before the ride for the exact pick up time if it's sort of given in 12 general. Now, some people with disabilities have reported a lot of difficulties because that hour is applied in a blanket manner. For example, you want a ride at 2 and -- 2 or 2:30 but you're given it at 3. That can be a problem particularly if there are difficulties in terms of an appointment time. Say you have an appointment at the doctor or for some kind of test that you need done at a particular hour. And I want to direct you to a section that gives you a little bit more information about this in the NCD report. So go to the NCD report and if you're using the html version, search for ontime performance on on-time performance, and the first time you see it, it will be the table of contents. Just click on that title, on-time performance and you'll get to the actual section. If you're using the pdf version, go to the page labeled 61. And I want to point out that a little bit late, I'm going all the way to the next page, there is something called factors affecting ontime performance and in that discussion of the one hour window, it describes how the Federal Transit Administration Office of Civil Rights in their various documents, their company ply answer reviews and other documents and also letters have made it clear that in their view it's part of the ADA for transit agencies to consider a rider's appointment time and not necessarily just apply the one hour window in a blanket way, and a way that disregards appointment time. For example, under the section of the one hour window and the importance of desired arrival or appointment time, if you go to the second indented quote, there is a quote from the ADA paratransit handbook that suggests that a 4:00 p.m. pick up time is not -- knowing that the person works until 5:00 p.m. would not be in keeping with 13 the concept of comparable service in the ADA. Similarly, offering a 9:00 a.m. pickup time if a person requests an 8:00 a.m. ride to get to work by 9 would not be in keeping with the concept of comparable service. Another example we've heard is if a person works until 5:00 p.m. and they get off work at 5, if they request a paratransit ride at 5:15 and the agency applies the one hour window and says I'll pick you up at 4:15, we all know that our boss is probably not going to be thrilled the we leave work 45 minutes early. And that is not exactly an appointment, but that is what FTA means when they say consider appointment time, which is that you must really look at the circumstances. It's not consistent with the ADA and it doesn't mean that they have to pick you up at 5 on the dot or 5:15 on the dot, but it's not legitimate under the ADA to say we'll pick you up at 4:15 knowing that you're not even off work at that time. The discussion in the NCD report points out the timeliness of the drop off if you're going to a doctor's appointment or any other appointment is often more critical to have service -- how usable the service is than the timeliness of the pick up. Whether you're going to work or school or medical appointments or recreational event, and certainly substantial numbers of late arrivals for appointments can limit the usability of service and constitute a capacity constraint which you'll see is another service criteria. There can be no capacity constraints. So if this would constitute a capacity constraint, that means that it's not really legal under the ADA. Another assessment, another FTA now calls those compliance reviews, and this is on Page 63 about halfway down, makes the point even more 14 strongly by questioning whether it's consistent with the ADA for a transit agency to offer only one pick up time even if it's within the one hour of the requested time because such an offer is not a negotiation. There was a compliance review, and we quote it here that stated only one pick up time is generated and offer to caller -- the compliance review concludes that the transit agency should address appropriate negotiation of trip times that respond to the rider's needs. So that's a little bit more about -- excuse me -- about the whole issue of the one hour window. Good. Let's go to service criteria No. 3. There is a lot of other information on ontime performance in this -- in the NCD report. We went into in depth on it on another webcast although we'll come back to it in a few minutes when we get to capacity constraints. Service criteria No. 3 is fares. Paratransit fares may not exceed twice the fare that would be paid by someone paying full fare on the bus, not discounted fare, but full fare for a trip of similar length at a similar time of day on the fixed-route bus or rail service. Fares for people accompanying a paratransit eligible person are the same as for the rider they are accompanying, but if an attendant is traveling with a paratransit eligible individual who needs the attendant in order to take the trip, the attendant is not to be charged. So twice the full fixed route fare is the basic rule. Service criteria No. 4, no trip purpose restrictions are allowed. Service criteria No. 5 is hours and days of service. Paratransit must be available throughout the same hours and days as the transit agency's fixed route service. The hours will not necessarily be the same systemwide, but 15 it depends on the corridors you are traveling, and if the bus runs certain hours, for example, if one corridor the bus runs from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., then paratransit must be given in the same hours. On another route if it goes to 10:00 p.m., then on that route, paratransit must also go all the way up on that corridor to 10:00 p.m. And the last service criteria is called capacity constraints. Although before I go into that one, I just want to see what questions we have. >> JACQUIE: Okay. I have quite a few. And I'll try to get the sort of service type questions. This one says -- this one is actually asking about a wheelchair user -- and this is from your neck of the woods, too, Marilyn, but who has had to wait on top of a platform as opposed to inside the shelter to get on a METRO train. Otherwise, the driver won't wait for the person in the wheelchair. So it's not really a paratransit so much, but you want to address that or do you just want to E-mail him later? >> MARILYN: Could you say it again? >> JACQUIE: He's a wheelchair user or he's writing about a wheelchair user who has to wait on top of a platform as opposed to being able to go inside the shelter to wait before a METRO train. >> MARILYN: Oh, I see. >> JACQUIE: Otherwise, the driver won't wait. >> MARILYN: I would -- hmmm, I wonder where everybody else is waiting? >> JACQUIE: It sounds like everyone else gets to wait inside this shelter area. >> MARILYN: If that's the case, certainly the person with the 16 disability gets to and the driver would need to wait. >> JACQUIE: Right. And for capacity constraints, in again is a little bit different, but it says -- because it's really involves a bus and not paratransit, but the question is can a bus driver wait and load the wheelchair user at the last minute and then tell him that there is no space right now. Even though he's let other people get on ahead of the wheelchair user and then ask him to wait for the next bus. >> MARILYN: I have heard the Federal Transit Administration address that question recently, and they said that there is a lot of different ways that a transit agency can set up a policy to do that, and many of them are perfectly acceptable. They can always board the wheelchair user first. They could do first come, first serve. But the one way that is not acceptable is to always load the wheelchair user last. >> JACQUIE: And this is a service area question. Please clarify whether narrow peninsulas of unserved areas between fixed route corridors are required in order to get complimentary paratransit. These suburban peninsula areas mixed in deeply into the ADA service area and are surrounded on three sides by fixed route ADA corridors. This is the one from Kentucky wrote this. >> MARILYN: We know -- I'm going to go back to the specific wording. Within the central portion of the urban area where the corridors around each route converge to form a solid mass, the transit agency must also provide paratransit service to small areas not inside any of the corridors, but which are surrounded by corridors. It sounded to me like the description and the question meets the description of the required service 17 area except without one possible characteristic, which is that the requirement is within the central portion of the urban areas like the center of town. And I don't know that it's required for a transit agency to serve any area that's completely surrounded by routes. I would say probably not. If it's near the -- and there is some judgment call there. So, you know, it's probably something the transit agency should really do in coordination with, you know, talking to getting input from the disability community, but there are probably entirely enclosed spaces that aren't anywhere near the center of town that are not necessarily required to be covered. Because the whole point of what FTA is saying or what DOT said in its regulation is that this is a good example of the ADA as a civil rights law that we're mirroring the bus routes and we're not really providing service to areas that the bus doesn't go near. >> JACQUIE: Right. This is really more of an eligibility question. >> MARILYN: That's okay. >> JACQUIE: Do you want to take that now? >> MARILYN: Sure. >> JACQUIE: That is FTA or any other federal agency addressed the issue of paratransit agencies making their own medical determinations, such as determining an applicant is ineligible despite strong medical documentation that might indicate eligibility. That is where paratransit nonmedical employees are making medical determinations. >> MARILYN: Well, I don't think they are medical determinations. Eligibility -- deciding eligibility is not considered a medical determination. It's a determination having to do with implementing the 18 ADA. It can draw on medical information, but itself is not medical. If the governing principle of ADA paratransit eligibility is whether the individual can use the fixed route service. Whether they can use it all of the time, part of the time or whether they can never use it. And ideally the transit agency is providing paratransit when the individual cannot use the fixed route service, but can require the person to use the fixed route service when they are able to use it. It could mean going against the advice of a doctor if for example -- and people have joked that the doctor will sign anything. Doctors are often not really at tuned to whether or not a person can use public transit. Now, sometimes they are. They are very often not attuned to the rules of the ADA. So if a doctor says, you know, a person needs paratransit, but the transit agency determines that they really could use the fixed route service, the transit agency can deny paratransit. Now, the individual can go back and appeal that decision, and we talked about appeals when we talked about eligibility. People also can find out more about appeals in the ADA transportation outline listed on your materials for this webcast. But one important thing about appeals is that we really strongly encourage disabled people who are denied and they feel it's inappropriate -- an incorrect denial to appeal. Too often we've seen people just say well they denied it once, they are going to deny it again, which is really not necessarily true, and appeals are very important under the ADA. Another factor is that often the Federal Transit Administration will 19 not even consider a complaint that's about eligibility if the person has not appealed. So its really important to appeal. Now, sometimes you run out of time for appeal because transit agencies are allowed to limit the appeal to a certain period of time. If you have this problem, there is a way out of it, which is that you can simply apply again for eligibility. Transit agencies are not allowed to restrict how often you can apply for eligibility. You can apply the day after you're denied, but in this case it would probably be some weeks later. If you waited too long and it's too late to do an appeal, you can reapply. If you're accepted, then you're probably happy with that, but if you're again denied, then you can appeal right away and you are within the time period. Because often denials of eligibility are reversed on appeal if there is new information or a better analysis, maybe more in-depth analysis or possibly other personnel looking at it who can see that the person should be eligible. >> JACQUIE: Okay. This is from an attorney in Wisconsin who says what are the FTA's enforcement powers with respect to remedying complaints? >> MARILYN: Well, some of it is moral-suasion. The FTA talks to transit agencies and can often get a policy changed or a service provided to an individual who should have it under the ADA. They may be able to get a driver to be disciplined if that driver should have been for acts which are ADA violations. You know, some people have been concerned that FTA isn't empowered to sort of order the transit agency to make the change. FTA, by the way, can also do a compliance review if there is a city where there are many paratransit complaints, FTA can do a compliance review of that system. And 20 under the compliance review, extensive communication will occur with the transit agency in a series of back and forth letters really analyzing what's going on and often the disability community has reported to DREDF that compliance reviews really do end up in service improvements. But it's true that sometimes the FTA cannot -- does not have the legal power to require that the transit agency do certain things. Not FTA, but the Department of Transportation can do other things. For example, FTA can refer the matter to the Department of Justice and then the Department of Justice can undertake steps that more involve the legal right to require changes. It's also possible for FTA to deny funding to the transit agency. FTA is reluctant to do that in part because reducing a transit agency's funding will probably make the quality deteriorate for people with disabilities and everyone else as well. But those are some of the avenues that can be pursued in response to a complaint. >> JACQUIE: And could you please give the web link to the FTA O. C. R.'s ontime stats for paratransit. >> MARILYN: The FTA's what? >> JACQUIE: Ontime stats for paratransit. >> MARILYN: I don't know -- well I think the main ones would be in the compliance reviews. So you want to go to that -- I think the easiest way to do it would be two ways: You could go back to the webcast -- the main webcast page for today, material No. 2 is called DREDF ADA -- excuse me, No. 3 is called ADA transportation resources. We went over that sheet. And at the bottom item 4 has the web link. If you go down that web page, 21 you'll see FTA ADA compliance reviews. If you click on that, you have a list of a lot of different cities compliance reviews, and if you select those, you will download the compliance review itself and in those documents are probably some on time performance statistics. I'm not sure exactly what form they are in, but it's city by city. The FTA doesn't have overall graphs of ontime performance statistics comparing transit agencies to each other that I'm aware of. >> JACQUIE: Okay, that catches us up with questions for now. >> MARILYN: Okay. Well, I want to go back then to that service criteria number 6, capacity constraints. The transit agency is not -- and really this is the service criteria that has probably the most punch. Transit agencies may not limit the ability of paratransit service in any of the following ways: There cannot be restrictions on the number of trips somebody can have, can take, there cannot be waiting lists for access to the service, and further, there cannot be any operational pattern or practice that significantly limits the availability of service including but not limited to substantial numbers of significantly untimely pickups, and I'm going to add or untimely arrivals, substantial number of trip denials, or missed trips or substantial numbers of trips with excessive lengths. Now, I hope people went back to the ADA paratransit -- DREDF's ADA paratransit outline to the service criteria, and I assume you were following service criteria No. 1. I think it was on Page 5. And we had No. 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 I believe begins on -- also on Page 5. And it lists really everything that I've given you. 22 There is actually a lot of information about this issue of substantial numbers of trip denials. So let me encourage people to go to the NCD report on Page 57 and there is a section called trip denials. So if you're using the html version, search for trip denials and will find the table of contents. Click on that and you'll get to the section. If you go down about a page of materials, is a section called court established right to next day service. A case in federal court against the Rochester transportation authority stemmed from high denial rates. The second circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decided in July of '03 against the transit agency. It faulted them for denying service for reasons that were entirely within its control. You know, in terms of a significant number of denials. The court held that the transit agency's regular denial of trip requests was attributable to its insufficient capacity and booking practices. For example, according to evidence that the transit agency did not dispute, the transit agency had provided 95 percent of all requested rides period, but only about 43 percent, less than half of the next day requested rides, and of course providing rides the day after the request is an ADA requirement. It was in that service criteria No. 2, response time. And so that's why it was a significant ADA violation. The court established that the ADA requires paratransit service providers to plan to meet 100 percent of the demand for next day ride requests, and it recognized also that even well laid plans may misfire on an occasion, and it per miss -- so it permits the denial of an insubstantial number of trips so long as the denials were not attributable 23 to the design of the paratransit system. The court also stated the regulations require a provider to rethink its plan and implement changes whenever a pattern of noncompliance develops. What this is stating is that the transit agency has to plan to meet all the demanded service and it knows what its demands are because it knows how many trips are requested. It has to plan to meet all that service and that means it has to have enough vehicles, enough drivers, enough telephone operators to meet -- to meet this requirement which is to not have any denials within the control of the transit agency. In other words, the ADA is saying that funding decisions of how much service to fund is an example of something that would fit within the control of the transit agency and that involves service capacity, how much service is provided. So every ride must be met with respect to if the denial is a result of a lack of capacity, a lack of drivers, a lack of vehicles, a lack of enough phone operators, that denial is an ADA violation. If, on the other hand, the denial is a result of something that was beyond the control of the transit agency, then it's not a violation of ADA. And there is a paragraph in the NCD report that quotes a letter brief that was filed by DOT -- by the Department of Justice on behalf of DOT in the same court case. It says that an excusable cause of operational problems must truly be beyond the control of the transit provider. A transit agency is expected to anticipate recurrent traffic congestion, seasonal variations in weather and the need to maintain vehicles. Indeed, once a seemingly unforeseen pattern develops, the recurrent event becomes foreseeable and the Transit Authority can no longer claim the matter is beyond its ability to address. 24 Now, let's contrast this with things that are truly beyond the control of the transit agency. Further, in the NCD report, other reasons occasional denials might be truly outside their control are, for example, a significant power outage that affects telephone service, or a major freeway accident, you know, an unusual event; or an unusual weather event. For these good principles that are now part of the ADA law, we're grateful to DOT secretary Norman Minnetta who played a significant role when he was in Congress and he had -- it was under his guidance that this brief was submitted and that went to the court. And at the same time the court -- anyway, the court established what it meant to be within transit agency control and what it meant not to be within a transit agency's control. There is a hidden impact in denial rates, and that hidden impact is something that the NCD report then goes into. I want to read this section and actually I want to find another report that also goes into this. The hidden impact of denial rates, this is an important issue and it's rarely discussed, and that is the discrepancy between what may seem to be a small rate of calculated denials and the significance of the impact on riders. Because for example a transit agency may say that we have a 2 percent denial rate or a 1 percent denial rate. And that would suggest that only 1 in 50 rides are denied or 1 in 100 rides are denied, but riders may feel there are far more denials and the NCD report goes into why there is such a discrepancy. For example, in terms of averaging, very often the denial rate for next day rides is a lot higher than an average denial rate. Or similarly, if you average the denial rate during peak service hours with 25 nonpeak service hours, it may mask a higher rate during rush hour. Another key example of the masking of averaging is when denials on subscription service which tend to be low or average with person who call every day for their rides. Another factor is violations of the one hour window. If the only time offered a rider -- if the only time offered survey ease more than one hour from the time requested, that is a trip denial, but if the rider accepts the offered time, a lot of transit agencies may not counts that as a denial. And it has the effect of lowering the denial rates past what it actually is. Another important factor is discouraged demand. These are on Page 59, by the way. Paratransit riders in many cities know from experience that if they call the transit agency too close to the time of the requested trip, they won't get the ride, and frustrated, they seize to make those calls, but any of that discouraged demand as we call it is not reflected in the trip denial calculations. For example, very long telephone hold times, and we've heard of hold times in cities as much as 10, 20, or 30 minutes or more. So that's a lot of information on trip denials. I want to talk about another capacity constraint which is not named here. As you noted on the outline, the ADA calls the capacity constraint any operational pattern or practice that significantly limits the availability of service, including particular things, but not limited to those things. And so there are other really any operational pattern that limits the availability of service could be a capacity constraint. And one of the most important ones that isn't named here is telephone hold times. 26 And there is something on that in the NCD report. So I want to encourage you to turn to page 68 or to search for the section called lengthy telephone hold times. You can probably just search for lengthy or lengthy telephone hold times and you'll get to that section. You'll get to table of contents section and click on it and get to that section. This NCD report discusses a number of things and at the bottom of page 68 it talks about how -- this was METRO Dade transit agency in Miami. And the assessment found that for example for one sample day anybody who -- 98 percent of people who held more than 5 minutes just abandoned the calls and didn't even wait to talk to an agent. That's a good signal that it's too long of a hold time. I want to give a little more information on these hold times, although I cannot -- I do not have it in a handout. You can, if you want, to download -- actually, you know, why don't I do that. I think I'm going to go right to your material No. 7, which is about telephone hold times. So hopefully people have downloaded that and can see it. There are a lot of principles that we now know about telephone hold times for ADA paratransit. There are -- first of all, there are various ways to measure ADA paratransit hold times and I talks about it because best practices -- best operational practices for ADA paratransit is something that we hope is useful. The best way to measure and the way absolutely preferred by the Federal Transit Administration is to measure not the average hold time, but the maximum hold time. So you -- a transit agency would look at its hold times and measure what they are. You know, they would have equipment that would measure what they are. 27 A best practice policy would be something like the following: 95 percent of calls should be answered within three minutes, and 99 percent of calls should be answered within five minutes. And there is a couple of notes on this. Each call route should be analyzed separately. So for example, reservations would be one group or if people are calling to get general information, that's a separate call group. If people are calling to find out where their ride is, known as where is my ride calls, that is another group. Another note here is that not all transit agency have the technology to measure in this manner. If a transit agency cannot measure the maximums, then hopefully they have the equipment or automatic call distribution system to measure in the next best way which is an hourly average of hold times. Average hold times should be calculated for each hour of the day, not an average all day, but for each hour. And a best practice policy would be something like this: 95 percent of the hourly periods should have an average hold time of no more than two minutes. 99 percent of the hourly period should have an average time of no more than four minutes. And again, each call group should be analyzed separately. It's preferable to measure maximum hold time as opposed to averaging because it's much simpler to measure -- to calculate maximum hold time and also it's much more transparent about what's really going on in the system. There are some other points that go along with measuring these hold times. One is about busy signals. There should be no busy signals. Because as soon as you have busy signals, you really have no way to measure what's happening. Also it should be a best practice that it should be a free call. Calling the paratransit call center should be a free call rather 28 than a toll call. Another issue that has come up is what are often called secondary holds. Secondary holds are when an individual may hold for a short amount of time. Their call is answered, but then a person may say may I put you hold and they are put on hold in a sense a second time and that's why we called them secondary holds. A lot of times secondary holds cannot be measured with technology. So agencies will really need to monitor them to be sure there isn't a problem. Secondary holds should be minimized as much as possible and a staff person should check with the caller every two minutes to let them know that, you know, we know you're there and we'll be with you in a moment. Small transit systems that don't have automatic call distribution technology can still measure what's happening in their system by conducting random visits to call centers and measuring the hold time and by conducting random statistically significant sampling throughout the days and hours of call center operation. And again, someone should go back and say to the person periodically, we didn't forget about you. And the last point on this sheet, queue positioning. It's a best practice if the transit agency has the technology to include this feature that lets the callers know where they are in the queue. For example, your call will be answered in the next three minutes or your call -- you have -- you are behind two other callers. You are behind only one caller ahead of you. Those are other things that are good practices. The where is my ride or late ride lines are just as important as reservations, if not more important. Because riders can't wait a long time 29 when they are trying to get updates on their pickup. In reservations, one can hopefully call at times when you know the phones aren't as busy, but for late ride calls, you need to be able to get through when the problem develops and this is something that is really not under a rider's control. Okay, I could go on, but Jacquie if there is other questions, I'm happy to take them. >> JACQUIE: Right now I have only one. >> MARILYN: Okay. >> JACQUIE: And it is, based on response times, telephone hold times and denials, are there certain cities or certain parts of the country that consistently provide a higher quality of paratransit services? >> MARILYN: Say the beginning of that question again. >> JACQUIE: Based on response times, telephone hold times, and denials, are there certain cities or parts of the country that provide a higher quality of paratransit service? >> MARILYN: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is known to be a system that has been pointed out to have a lot of best practices. It's director teaches a course on ADA paratransit eligibility, for example, and they have a very good system of conditional eligibility. I'm not familiar with what they do specifically on the section that is you mentioned. Cities vary a lot and being from DREDF, I'm a little more apt to know city that is are a problem rather than cities that excel. >> JACQUIE: Right. people don't call you to say our paratransit people are doing a great job. >> MARILYN: You know, sometimes we do know just because we become 30 familiar with them on our work on different projects. And there is a number of very good systems, but I don't really have exact figures at my disposal. So I don't think I want to name names so to speak just because I may know one aspect of their service, but not another. But if there aren't any other questions right now, I want to go back to the outline which after service criteria anymore 6 I believe talks about subscription service although I may just mention briefly. Subscription service in which paratransit riders may reserve rides for a particular time every I week or every day rather than calling in each day is certainly permitted under the ADA. The a. DA regulation had a rule that actually has confused a lot of people. It said the subscription service may not absorb more than 50 percent of the number of trips available at any given time of day unless there is nonsubscription capacity left over. What this means is that if you are going to work or to school every day, the same day, to the same place, a transit agency can give you a subscription and you don't have to call in every day for the ride, but they come pick you up at the same time every day or certain times of the week. This is certainly convenient for the rider and is beneficial and helpful for transit agencies also. This rule meant that some transit agencies were providing less subscription service than they wanted to, thing that they have to leave the rest of their capacity open, but in fact that rule only applies if there is capacity constraints. Which is what it means when it says unless there is nonsubscription capacity left over. If a transit agency does not have capacity constraints, they can provide a much higher 31 level of subscription service and your NCD report actually goes into that a little bit more right after the telephone hold section that we were on a minute ago. The bottom of page 69 in the second paragraph under subscription service. This regulation is often misunderstood to mean an absolute prohibition on transit agencies offering more than 50 percent of subscription service. Actually as long as the system is not denying rides to nonsubscription riders, the ADA allows the subscription service to exceed 50 percent, in fact, it can reach 80 percent, 90 percent or whatever amount riders request and transit agencies wish to provide. However, a trend that we were seeing for awhile was some transit agencies reducing or eliminating subscription service which can be a real problem. When subscription service is not available, riders with work or school or other regular schedules are at a significant disadvantage. They have to start from scratch to arrange a new schedule for every day's ride which in some systems is a laborious task that has to be carried flew the workday, and we have the next section in the NCD report talks about some of these barriers, some of these same barriers. So subscription service is really something that we encourage the provision of and I want to offer a best practice which is that if a transit agency does not have subscription service or limits it such that riders who want it cannot get it, the transit agency should take paratransit reservations at least a week in advance to ease up on the burden of daily reserving these rides which can sometimes be a very lengthy process. Any other questions? If not, I'll go to a couple of other items. >> JACQUIE: No, nothing else right now. 32 >> MARILYN: Sorry? >> JACQUIE: Nothing else right now. >> MARILYN: Okay, I want to direct people's attention in the NCD report to another section called pay equity on Page 85. It's called equalizing pay between fixed route drivers and paratransit drivers. She's using the html version, you'll get the table of contents section and click on it to get to the main section. If you're using pdf, page 85. Almost all transit agencies pay fixed-route bus drivers considerably more in wages and benefits than paratransit drivers. Eliminating this discrepancy could resolve some of the chronic difficulties with paratransit because low driver salaries have led to a high turnover and all kinds of problems. A few transit agencies on the next page, a few transit agencies have eliminated the pay discrepancy and have seen significant service benefits as a result. There is one example given in Antioch, California which is outside the San Francisco Bay area. And there is -- it's not listed in the report, but I understand that Salt Lake city now has wage parity between fixed route and paratransit drivers and link transit in Washington has complete pay equity. Other transit agencies have equalize training and gotten some of the same benefits, including fixed route and paratransit drivers in the same training. I want to focus on what happened at link transit and that's the indented quotes on Page 86. I interviewed their general manager who the most recent one actually came after this practice was begun because the practice dates back to 1995. In 1995 the agency decided to bring its paratransit operation in-house. The board decided that the operators, that 33 is the drivers, would be fully integrated into the fixed route system and that full wage parity would be provided. These operators, that is the drivers, were assumed from the contractor they were made employees and they had to complete the training program. Now these operators can choose to driver exclusively paratransit, exclusive fixed route or a combination based on their seniority. They are all paid on the same scale. Most of them regularly choose to go back and forth between paratransit and fixed route. Nearly all of them drive paratransit at least two months a year. And I want to go ahead and read what the transit agency reported as the benefits: Their turnover rate is very low and uniform when paratransit and fixed route when usually paratransit drivers have a much bigger turnover. Their average operator has driven for ten years as opposed to most paratransit systems that have a turnover of about 50 percent a year and it's resulted in very skilled drivers who rarely get lost, know nearly all of their passengers and operate at a very high productivity, 3.9 ADA passengers per hour, compared to an industry average of about 1.8 passengers per hour. In addition, by having the drivers operate both paratransit and fixed route, efforts to move paratransit riders to fixed route have bench more successful. The passengers seem to be more willing when they know the big bus operator is somebody who has transported them on paratransit. And this general manager said that driver attitude in his view has a huge impact on the possibility of moving paratransit riders on to the fixed route system. He believes that parity reduces paratransit demand. And there is other things mentioned here. In fact, we found evidence of -- that some of the 34 Washington state systems, somebody else was asking for parts of the country -- some of the Washington state systems have done a lot in terms of this kind of equalization of paratransit and fixed route riders. There is one other thing that I wanted to do. >> JACQUIE: We have one other question. >> MARILYN: Go ahead and do that. >> JACQUIE: How should the agency measure busy signals? I know of an agency, and he's writing from Kansas, where you call for 30 minutes and the line is always busy. >> MARILYN: My understanding is that you can get -- I believe it's called a busy report from the phone company about your busy signals. But you can also monitor it simply by -- the transit agency can monitor it simply by calling in to its own reservations line and seeing if there is a busy signal. There really should be no busy signals. Sit my understanding that FTA feels that -- none of the figures they would get from transit agency are particularly useful if there are busy signals because it throws everything off. It don't mean anything because how many people didn't even get through? >> JACQUIE: Right. >> MARILYN: And that's important. If riders -- if transit agencies sort of are asking this question, it's useful perhaps to know how to measure them, but if riders are calling and getting busy signals, we really encourage people to submit a complaint. I believe that FTA Office of Civil Rights would act on such complaints because they are not thrilled to have -- they are not happy to see busy signals. So people should send in 35 the complaint form. >> JACQUIE: Okay. >> MARILYN: If there are busy signals. And if we have just another minute, I actually meant to do this at the beginning, but I want people to go to material No. 5, which is labeled in the materials list as bus stops improvements. The sheet that you get actually has a long name, comparison of capital costs for fixed-route bus stop improvements to paratransit operating costs. And it's from Maryland MTA in Baltimore. It's making the point that improving the fixed route system can really reduce the expenses the transit agency has to pay to give people paratransit rides, and it states -- I'll just go over the highlights real quick. Transit agencies rarely have control over the public right of way, over the streets and sidewalks where the vast majority of bus stops are located. Sometimes they do have direct authority, but many times the bus stops are under the jurisdiction of the city, of the municipality. And transit agencies frequently have little or no say in how sidewalks are constructed or bus stops are constructed. Transit agencies are usually dependent on what they find and must be content to make the most of those facilities, but this doesn't have to be the case. And this information sheet, which by the way I got from the U.S. Access Board, under the bus stop improvements section talks about how Maryland MTA has undertaken a program to improve some of its fixed route bus stops even though it's not generally responsible or at least doesn't have the authority for facilities in the public right of way. And the way they've done it is by obtaining permits from the localities and simply doing the work themselves and it talks about the costs that they 36 spend and it talks about the different levels and a simple versus an enhanced level. A couple of paragraphs down, MTA believes that as it gains more experience and develops more standards and better relations with the localities, the costs will decrease. And then at the end, there is -- there are figures given of how much has been spent on the bus stops and how much it saves in terms of the cost of providing paratransit. And the last paragraph, if a person using paratransit for work can now use the fixed route service, the cost of the simple improvement was recovered in just ten weeks. The cost of the enhanced stop was recovered in 18 months. Pretty quick. So it's a nice example of how undertaking measures that do have a cost can have a much greater payoff in terms of reducing paratransit costs. I guess we've reached our time limit. Jacquie, do we have on they questions? >> JACQUIE: We do not. That's it for the questions. >> MARILYN: I want to thank very much the southwest DBTAC ADA center for recognizing the importance of ADA transportation and allowing us to be part of this wonderful program to talk to you over a period of months. >> JACQUIE: And we sure appreciate you doing this, too, Marilyn. It's been so great because, you know, it is often overlooked, transportation, in terms of the ADA and yet it's so critical to the functioning in your life. So we really appreciate you sharing your expertise on this. Please feel free to share today's archives of today's presentation with your colleagues. They'll be available tomorrow at ilru.org and please don't forget to complete the evaluation on the webcast page. We are very interested in receiving your feedback. 37 Thanks again to the National Institute on Disability rehabilitation and research, NIDRR, our sponsor for today. The opinions and views expressed today are those of the presenter and no endorsement of the sponsoring agency should be inferred. And finally, this webcast would not be possible without the efforts of our webcast team, and Rob Dickehuth for his technical expertise and our captioner, today, Marie Bryant. Thanks everybody. Thanks for joining us. Have a dazzling day.