Visible, Diverse and United:

Breakout Session #4: Transportation

Without accessible, affordable and routinely available transportation, many people with disabilities are excluded from participating in everyday life. Transportation provides entrée to employment, education, recreation, healthcare and socialization. Although the Bay Area is often regarded as a model community for people with disabilities, Task Force participants underscored how unavailable and erratic transportation options really are for people with disabilities in the Bay Area. Transportation options are especially problematic when traveling between one community, county or transportation system and another. Outdated, subjective or confusing criteria in order to be eligible for certain transportation options further contribute to a logistical nightmare when traveling outside the home.

Transportation issues present additional challenges to parents with disabilities, and Task Force members stressed that Transportation was an issue that affected more aspects of parenting with a disability than any other issue. This confirms a 1998 national study by Through the Looking Glass in which 79% of parents with disabilities reported transportation as a problem that interfered with or prevented routine and critical parent-child activities. A parent with a disability may not only have to arrange and coordinate transportation for her/himself, but often for their child as well. Coordinating and waiting for transportation can easily consume hours each day. Many transportation options are either not available altogether or not available for a parent and child traveling together. All this can be especially stressful when a child is sick or if there are several children in the family who are traveling at the same time.

Specific Problems with Transportation:

• Uniform policies and services. Task Force members repeatedly cited examples of the lack of clearly defined policies throughout all Bay Area public transportation systems - resulting in highly variable, inconsistent or even non-existent transportation options for parents with disabilities. For example, whether or not a child can accompany a parent at all, whether the parent must bring a car seat for the child to ride in, whether paratransit can be used to transport a non-disabled child accompanied by their disabled parent to the child's center and/or school, whether an attendant/aide is allowed to accompany the parent - and, if these options exist, whether or not there is an additional cost to the parent.



• Safety. There are no uniform safety standards for different modes of transportation or transportation systems that address parents with disabilities traveling with their children. This includes private vehicles, municipal bus and light rail systems, taxis, BART, paratransit, school buses.



• Accessibility. Although the ADA provides guidelines for many aspects of transportation access in general, it does not consider situations involving parents with disabilities and their children. As a result, the degree of accessibility and the levels of service are locally determined, often precluding viable options for parents with disabilities.



• Paratransit. Task Force members were especially concerned over problems with paratransit in the Bay Area. There is a high degree of inconsistency among paratransit systems within the Bay Area with regard to availability, scheduling, criteria for participation, responsiveness, extra costs, allowable pick-up or drop-off locations -- and whether or not a particular paratransit will accept or accommodate children accompanying their parent. Since paratransit is often the only transportation option for many parents with disabilities who do not live near public transportation, this is an extremely critical issue for many families in the Bay Area.



• Disability-appropriate accommodations and equipment. Different types of disabilities in parent or child require different types of transportation modifications or adaptive equipment. However, many parents as well as most transportation workers and officials do not know what is required, what works or what is available. In addition to educating parents and transit officials about transportation options and accommodations, new designs and new equipment are needed.

Specific Recommendations addressing Transportation Issues:

• Establish clear and standard policies within and across transportation systems concerning parents with disabilities and their families. These policies should be standardized as well as flexible - that is, policies that are uniform, clearly articulated, but also accommodate parents with diverse disabilities in diverse communities and family configurations.



• Build coalitions with others who rely on public transportation (e.g., seniors and low-income populations).



• Identify best practices in communities and transportation systems, and sharing these successes with other parents. For example, Santa Rosa was cited by several participants as being especially helpful compared to other areas in the Bay Area.



• Identify currently available equipment or adaptive equipment that would facilitate traveling with children, and make this information widely available. For example, Sit-N-Stroll is a combination stroller, car seat and booster seat that many parents cited as particularly helpful when traveling with a small child.



• Create a website that identifies what transportation options and what transportation-related equipment is available for parents in the Bay Area. One suggestion was to work with the Alliance for Technology Access (ATA) that has a database and website.



• Encourage and fund new technologies and new adaptive equipment that address transportation needs of parents with disabilities.



• Identify representatives on area transportation advisory boards who will promote issues of concern to parents with disabilities. For example, the Metropolitan Transit Agency (MTA) advisory committee.

• Introduction and Featured Presentations


• Overall Recommendations
• Breakout Sessions
1. Breakout Session #1: Parental Rights
2. Breakout Session #2: Recreation
3. Breakout Session #3: Parents with Disabilities and Their Child's School System
4. Breakout Session #5: Programming and Systems Change