NCD News Conference

2165 Rayburn House Office Building

June 13, 2005
2:00 p.m.

Remarks for Michael A. Winter
Director, Office of Civil Rights
Federal Transit Administration

Good afternoon, and thank you for allowing me to participate in this panel discussion today.

I am Michael Winter, and I’m the Director of Civil Rights for the Federal Transit Administration. I’ve been in this position for almost four years now, but I’ve been with the U.S. Department of Transportation for more than ten, serving in various capacities within FTA and the Office of the Secretary. Before I came to Washington, I served as an elected member of the board at AC Transit in Oakland, California. And, of course, I’ve been involved in disability issues my entire life!

When I was a little boy growing up in a poor neighborhood in the City of Chicago, I would look up at the elevated trains of the Chicago Transit Authority that rumbled overhead and that connected every corner of the city.

But all I could do was look; there was no way for me to gain access to those elevated stations, platforms and trains. And forget about riding the bus; there were no wheelchair lifts in those days! In order to participate in everyday community life – go to school, go to a movie, go out on a date – I had to take a taxi. By the time I was able to ride the bus for the first time, I was 27 years old and living in California.

Today in Chicago, a little boy or girl in a wheelchair can ride those elevated trains. And by riding out to O’Hare Airport, or downtown to Union Station, he or she can go anywhere in the entire country – or the entire world!
My job – and the function of my office – is to provide advice and counsel to the Administrator on all internal agency and external grant program issues that have potential civil rights implications.

This, of course, includes the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the dramatic progress that has been made in public transportation in the 15 years since the ADA was passed. As NCD noted in its report, more than 90% of transit buses are now equipped with a lift or a ramp, and more than 65% of key stations in older transit systems are accessible – along with every station that has been built or renovated in the last decade. It’s also encouraging to note that 60% of adults with disabilities report that their access to transit has improved.

But of course, these successes are limited to where areas where transit service is available; the primary problem today is not lack of access, but lack of service. While the ADA requires transportation systems to be accessible, it does not mandate the existence of any transportation system at all. If the bus doesn’t come down your street, then it doesn’t matter whether it has a lift or not. The issue today is less about accessibility, and more about mobility. And that is why this Administration has proposed a 40 percent increase in funding for rural transit programs, where lack of public transportation is most acute.

Like NCD, we are also aware that in addition to ADA Paratransit, there are all kinds of other demand-response systems running around, serving clients of this or that Federal, state or local agency or program -- sometimes overlapping service areas, sometimes serving different populations, sometimes making trips to and from the same places with some of the same people on board.

At the Department of Transportation and in the Federal Transit Administration, we are committed to doing all that we can to help. The United We Ride program, which was initiated two years ago, now provides resources, tools, and technical assistance to help communities improve the coordination of transportation resources. At the Federal level, we have made the most of the President’s Executive Order on Human Service Transportation Coordination to bring together all of the Federal departments that have a stake in transportation. Eleven departments have been working together on the Interagency Council on Coordination and Mobility to find ways to make our programs work better for communities.

Last month, the White House released the Council’s Report to the President, which responds to the President’s Executive Order. It demonstrates real progress and a solid plan for moving forward to simplify access, remove barriers at the Federal level, and help communities better meet the needs of transportation-disadvantaged individuals.

Not only have tools been made available for communities …from planning guidebooks to best practices ideas, but we have also deployed United We Ride Ambassadors, who are ready and willing to help communities make the most of the resources available and give more people a ride. Coordinating human service transportation is key to boosting ridership and delivering paratransit service above and beyond the ADA requirements.

I was pleased to notice that the report that NCD is releasing today reflects many of the same themes that I see in my office on a regular basis. The issues of accessible taxi service, accessible rural transportation, and service area are themes that we have seen repeated in our series of Regional Dialogues on Accessible Transportation that we have been holding throughout the country for the past three years.

The purpose of these Dialogues is to open the lines of communication between the local disability community and the local transit operator, so that they can work out any issues they may have before they end up on my desk! It also allows my office to identify emerging national issues and get to work on them before they get out of hand.

We also work to educate the transit industry through a series of training courses that we conduct with the National Transit Institute. This year we’ve scheduled 8 classes on paratransit, covering issues involving management practices, eligibility, and scheduling and dispatching.

Where the issues do involve compliance with the ADA regulations – or lack of compliance – we have several enforcement mechanisms that we rely on. Our main tool is the compliance assessments that we conduct of transit operators for both paratransit and fixed-route service, where we look at things like lift or ramp deployments and stop announcements, capacity constraints and the like. We try to conduct about six of those every year. We also continue to monitor compliance with the key station requirements through our key station assessments.

And of course we investigate complaints that come in to my office. When I started in this position, there was a backlog of about 300 complaints; we’ve resolved those, but more importantly we’ve taken a proactive approach to try and resolve issues informally before they become complaints. For the last two years, FTA has received an average of only 15 new complaints a year.

Many of the recommendations made in the report reflect areas that we have been working to address, such as trip denials, rail station platforms, and the “door-to-door” vs. “curb-to-curb” issue, in conjunction with the Department’s Disability Law Coordinating Council. We hope to be able to issue some guidance soon.

That’s an important point, by the way. One of the reasons that there has been so much confusion over some of the ADA requirements is that often the answer you got depended on who you asked. Someone with a commuter rail question might get a different answer from the Federal Railroad Administration than they would get from FTA, for example. One of the first things that Secretary Mineta did when he came on board was to establish a mechanism to ensure consistency throughout the Department on disability issues under the ADA, the Air Carrier Access Act, and Section 504. On the one hand, it can slow things down by requiring review and approval of every detail by an interagency committee; but on the other hand, it does ensure that the answer you get is, in fact, your final answer!

FTA takes the NCD report seriously, and we will look carefully at your recommendations.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this rollout today. A little over 15 years ago, a similar report from NCD planted the seeds for what became the ADA, and I look forward to working with you to cultivate the recommendations you’ve made here today.