Letter to FTA on accessible ground transportation recommendations

The Honorable Marcus J. Molinaro
U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Transit Administration
Office of the Administrator
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
East Building
Washington, DC 20590

January 6, 2026

Dear Administrator Molinaro:

I write as Vice Chairman and Acting Chair of the National Council on Disability (NCD), an independent federal agency charged with advising the President, Congress, and other federal agencies on disability policy to advance the goals of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA): equal opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency for people with disabilities. In July, NCD submitted a report to the President and Congress entitled, Ground Transportation for People with Mobility Disabilities 2025: Challenges and Progress. ¹ This report is the product of an examination of the current state of ground transportation in the United States for people with mobility disabilities who rely on and require accessible transportation—particularly wheelchair users. The report offers extensive research findings and policy recommendations, while detailing continued barriers, challenges, and some promising innovations.

Overall, NCD found that while some progress has been made, transportation barriers remain a major concern for people with mobility disabilities across the nation. These barriers contribute to a host of negative outcomes like unemployment, poverty, inability to access health care, isolation, and diminished social participation. Wheelchair users remain a population that is often left behind, even as technology advances, and the nation is growing increasingly older. ²

Specifically, among other things, NCD found that transportation network companies (TNCs), such as Uber and Lyft, have grown exponentially, increasing the convenience and availability of on-demand rides for many Americans. TNCs now have 80 percent or more of the ground transportation market, which was once held by taxis. However, Americans who need wheelchair accessible vehicles (WAVs) to travel do not benefit equally from the benefits TNCs can provide, such as shorter wait times, cheaper fares, and ease of payment. TNCs only provide WAVs in about ten U.S. cities, leaving millions of wheelchair users without service. As taxi drivers left to work for TNCs that had lower entry costs, the taxi WAVs that were heavily relied on by WAV users diminished, leaving few or no options for on-demand, door-to-door, wheelchair-accessible service in many communities.

We also found that as Autonomous Vehicle technology is developing, the needs of wheelchair users are not being addressed. The businesses that currently provide transportation to the public in fully autonomous taxis are using small vehicles and offer no autonomous wheelchair-accessible options. No AV business that we interviewed for the report has plans to design or manufacture an autonomous wheelchair-accessible vehicle. The imminent increase in autonomous taxis without models that are physically accessible to wheelchair users will result in the same lack of access as the largely inaccessible transportation network company model (e.g., Uber and Lyft).

FTA can play an important role in supporting the development of wheelchair-accessible AVs so that the same pattern of diminishing wheelchair users’ transportation options that occurred with TNCs, does not repeat itself as reliance on AVs becomes more common.

NCD lauds FTA’s work in supporting and incentivizing new transportation models, including public-private partnerships to expand the availability of on-demand, wheelchair-accessible transportation options. ³ FTA can, and should, continue to take steps to ensure that that the future of transportation is designed to include everyone, including wheelchair users.

Specifically, based on the complete set of findings in our report, NCD urges FTA to:

• Continue to fund innovative transit models that are of wheelchair users and other people with disabilities. One example of these models is microtransit, which is a demand-responsive model that provides wheelchair-accessible public transportation and has proven to be a successful method for increasing transportation access for people with disabilities, even in rural areas. FTA’s Mobility on Demand Sandbox Program has funded and studied several innovative transit models, including microtransit projects. ⁴

• Continue to support partnerships between public transit agencies and private transportation providers (e.g., taxis, TNCs and microtransit providers) to increase the availability of wheelchair-accessible, on-demand transit for people with disabilities, for first-mile/last-mile connections, door-to-door service, and to extend limited fixed-route bus service. FTA’s Mobility on Demand Sandbox program has been an important source of support for many such partnerships. [^5](Id.) One transit agency stated that its program “would not have been possible without FTA funding and institutional support.” ⁵

• Allow more flexibility in transit agencies’ use of federal transit funding so that they may pursue operationally focused projects, like microtransit, which can increase wheelchair-accessible transportation, instead of limiting transit agencies’ funding to capital expenditures. Rural areas, which frequently lack accessible transportation options, would particularly benefit from greater funding flexibility that would allow agencies to use on-demand microtransit to reach people with disabilities where bus routes do not exist or are not easy to access.

• Incentivize or encourage transit agencies to improve paratransit by using technology such as dynamic routing software that uses algorithms and data to calculate the most efficient route for a vehicle to take between multiple points and reduces mileage. This technology could help bring down the cost of paratransit while improving the rider experience through more accurate arrival estimates and increased on-time performance.

I would welcome a meeting with you soon to discuss this letter and NCD’s report. You can reach me at (202) 272-2004 or via email at skennemer@ncd.gov. On January 26, Joy Welan, Senior Attorney Advisor, will contact your office to coordinate a potential meeting if we do not hear from your office before then. If you have any questions, Ms. Welan at can be reached at jwelan@ncd.gov.

Respectfully,

David Shawn Kennemer

Vice Chairman and Acting Chair

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