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Transportation security: While there has been growing tension between personal liberty and security, this tension in air-travel security has been substantially avoided for people with disabilities by the combined efforts of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the disability community. The Department of Transportation (DOT) and the TSA have incorporated issues of concern to passengers with disabilities into its training curriculum for airport security screeners, and for its outreach to the disability community. The TSA's fact sheet on security requirements and accessibility requirements has provided valuable information and helped to preserve awareness that these two goals need not be incompatible. The Department's Disability Coalition, which held its initial meeting in November 2002, appears to represent an extremely promising forum for ensuring continued flow of information and effective communication of concerns. Concerns:With the impending transfer of the TSA from DOT to the newly created Department of Homeland Security (HSD), what measures will be taken to ensure that the mechanisms already in place will be preserved and enhanced, and to ensure continuity will exist with respect to current ongoing efforts? Coalition building, training materials and operational guidelines are still under development in a number of key disability-related areas, including access for nonticketed persons to gate areas. Additional issues include locating and retrieving of screened bags by passengers with visual impairments who cannot find them after inspection or who are not informed when their bags are taken aside for hand search. Foreign Carriers: Last year's report called for DOT to complete negotiations with foreign flag carriers serving the U.S on procedures to ensure their compliance with the Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA). Subsequent development of domestic security procedures, including requirements that apply to foreign carriers, makes it all the more urgent that negotiations or rulemaking proceed with international carriers and regulators aimed at ensuring that accessibility keeps pace. Concerns: These procedures could fall between the cracks, not coming within the jurisdiction or priorities of DOT or the HSD, or alternatively become the subject of competing jurisdictional claims between them. Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA): Implementation of the ACAA is a civil rights jurisdiction different and independent of ADA, Section 504 or any other provisions broadly known across the Federal Government. With expertise likely divided between the HUD's TSA and the Department of Transportation's Aviation Consumer Protection Division, sustained and focused effort and effective coordination will be required. DOT has taken several ACAA-Implementation steps in the past year, including the support of the Aviation Consumer Disability Hotline where complaints can be made and recorded. In August of 2002, DOT and NCD entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) whereby DOT provided NCD with the resources to assist with a continuing collaboration on ACAA implementation. The MOU provides that NCD will work with the airline industry and the disability community in developing guidance on service animals, on oxygen users and on access for air travelers who are deaf and hard of hearing, and to assist DOT with its ACAA forums. Concerns: OMB's decision to cease the air traveler satisfaction survey process. Major airline personnel cutbacks on services and accommodations for passengers with disabilities. As financially strapped air carriers and airport managements cut back on employees and contractual services, a number of anecdotal reports suggest longer waits for assistance, unavailability of escort personnel where needed and other difficulties. How and who will administer, enforce and monitor the ACAA once responsibility for air travel is divided between DOT and the HSD? How will the line between security jurisdiction and accessibility jurisdiction be drawn or be crossed, and who will be making the key decisions? Airport Ticket Machines: For many passengers with disabilities, including people who are blind or people who have motor or cognitive impairments, airport ticket machines are inaccessible and result in longer lines for people waiting to be served by a dwindling number of counter agents. There are ways to make these machines accessible. ATM machines, mass transit ticket and fare machines and kiosks of many kinds have been made accessible to users who are blind, and the costs of such machines are now essentially identical to those of conventional machines. The apparent failure of the new generation of airport ticket machines to incorporate such accessibility features appears to be just indifference. Equity: Transportation policy involves complex and constantly shifting questions of equity. Many Americans, including older Americans and many people with disabilities, are unable to drive, because of the nature of their disabilities or for legal reasons, or because of practical problems in the transportation infrastructure willing to pump gas. Many people with and without disabilities living in proximity to public transit choose not to drive, and many more would make that choice if given the option. The reauthorization occurs at a very different time for Americans with disabilities than existed when TEA-21 was enacted five years ago because of the New Freedom Initiative and the Olmstead decision. Olmstead, NFI and Transportation: The NFI budget authorizations and appropriations for pilot demonstration transportation projects and for matching grants to nontraditional providers or planners should also be incorporated into the TEA-21. The practices and priorities of paratransit systems must ensure that these programs maximize the goals of community in supporting both Olmstead and employment goals for Americans of all ages with disabilities. Current law contains provisions for providing support for transportation for people entering or returning to employment through welfare reform programs, and to facilitate certain transportation to and from work for other low-income persons. Whether through paratransit or other means, these provisions continue in effect, but to be responsive to the needs of persons with disabilities the method adopted must incorporate sufficient flexibility to allow for use of accessible vehicles and, where appropriate, for other technology or necessary support services. Secondly, since effective Olmstead plans will focus on preventing institutionalization or reversing it, the law is intended for many people who are not disabled currently but may be in the future. Unless transit systems carefully evaluate eligibility criteria and procedures, overly technical definitions of who qualifies for paratransit or other specialized Olmstead-related services based on legal status, age or other seemingly objective criteria may result in denial of service to people who badly need it to remain in their homes and communities. Emerging Issues: The U.S. Access Board has done a great deal to bring issues of pedestrian access and safety to public attention. The Board, with a broadly representative advisory, proposed for public discussion rights-of-way guidelines in June 2002. With new developments in urban design and traffic engineering, ranging from "blended transitions" (which dispense with curbs or curb-cuts between sidewalks and streets) to traffic roundabouts (intended to facilitate the uninterrupted flow of vehicular traffic), pedestrian safety has emerged as an issue not only for people with disabilities but for everyone. The ADA included provisions for requiring detectable warning edges on mass transit platforms and in hazardous pedestrian areas, but implementation of these safety precautions, especially in connection with mass transit platform edges, has been slowed by disputes over the precise methods and materials to be used, cost considerations and a variety of other factors. Technological advances in audible or vibratory traffic signals also remain to be systematically implemented, though a number of communities have taken the initiative, adopting innovative plans and technologies without waiting for federal guidance, and though important research is under way. TEA-21 contains provisions for research in a number of related areas, including such other frontiers as smart highways. DOT has also included some extremely valuable requirements in its manuals. Accordingly, new linkages must be forged between the kinds of research and policymaking authorized under ADA and the parallel efforts being made under the Transportation Act. At a minimum this cooperation should entail input from people with disabilities or those with expertise in the relevant transportation issues into the design of major transportation research projects and experiments. Backed up by improved coordination between DOT and DOJ, the law should also require a clear recognition that ADA applies to transportation systems, policies and vehicles in ways gong well beyond the familiar issue of accessibility of intercity buses. Such coordination also requires the realization that Section 504 applies not only to accessibility of vehicles, design of stations and level of services, but also to the effects of new transportation systems on related access issues such as the ability of pedestrians with disabilities to safely board or disembark. Paratransit: Many public transit agencies are making greater use of conditional eligibility, meaning they determine eligibility for service based on the purpose of the trip, the number of trips in a given time period, or other factors representing their sense of priorities. Two cases on this subject are now making their way through the federal courts. The DOJ and DOT filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit supporting the lower court finding that next-day service must be provided to all eligible persons. As local and state budgetary problems lead to cutbacks in fixed-route mass transit service, more and more people with disabilities are likely to need paratransit services owing to increased difficulties, ranging from longer periods waiting in extreme hot or cold to increased personal security concerns at isolated stops. Transit agencies are likely to make increased use of trip-eligibility criteria or to try to impose longer advance-notice requirements for trip requests. Under these circumstances, whatever the TEA-21 reauthorization ultimately specifies, DOT must be all the more vigilant in maintaining the fairness and effectiveness of paratransit while maximizing its flexibility in dealing with new needs and potential new customers. Return to the top of the page.
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