June 13, 2005 Monday 1:43 AM Eastern Time

SECTION: DOMESTIC NEWS

LENGTH: 541 words

HEADLINE: Report: Transport Fails to Serve Disabled

BYLINE: SIOBHAN McDONOUGH; Associated Press Writer

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

BODY:
Disabled people who need to use public trains or buses are not being well served despite billions of dollars spent to improve transportation for the handicapped, government advisers report.

Buses leave disabled commuters waiting at stops or may be ill-equipped to handle wheelchairs, the National Council on Disability said in a report being released Monday. Wheelchairs can get stuck in the wide spaces between platforms and trains, the council said. A bus driver may forget to announce stops, withholding vital information from a blind passenger.

The council, a federal agency that advises the president and Congress, found persistent problems for disabled people who use public transportation despite years of federal efforts to make buses and trains more accessible.

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 helped disabled people get around, and 70 federal programs fund different aspects of community transportation services.

Although some public transit agencies had already provided accessible bus service, the ADA accelerated the trend. In 1989, 36 percent of the national bus fleet was accessible. Thirteen years later, 91 percent of the fleet was lift- or ramp-equipped.

The disability council's chairman, Lex Frieden, 56, has firsthand experience of the progress.

"In the last 30 years I've seen amazing changes," said Frieden, who uses a wheelchair. "The fact that I can go down the street from my home and catch a bus with a ramp on it, take the bus down to the transit center, to get on the light rail across town, go to another transit center, catch a bus, go to an airport, get on a plane."

Still, he added, more needs to be done to help the 6 million people with disabilities who have difficulties getting the transportation they need.

Major gaps exist for those who live in rural areas or rely on paratransit - a supplemental system of transporting people from their home to work, appointments or transit centers. The act says that where public transportation exists, it needs to be accessible to disabled people, but it doesn't address rural areas that don't have public transportation.

"It's not a matter of convenience for disabled people to have access to transportation," said Frieden. "It's a matter of employment or not, a matter of health care or not, sometimes a matter of education or not. It's a matter of full participation in a community or not."

Accessible streets, sidewalks and other public infrastructure are essential. Communities across the country often put up inadvertent barriers, such as hard-to-reach bus stops, intersections without curb ramps and pedestrian signals that the visually impaired can't read.

Some bus agencies have begun using automatic stop announcement systems, but they are not always reliable. Wheelchair lifts on buses are not always well maintained. Sometimes bus drivers don't even stop if they think helping a handicapped passenger will put them behind schedule.

Hassles for handicapped subway riders include nonworking elevators and dangerous gaps between trains and platforms.

The report analysis is based on assessments from riders and advocates, transit operators and researchers.

On the Net:

National Council on Disability: http://www.ncd.gov

LOAD-DATE: June 13, 2005