The Balancing Act of Paratransit Service

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I have commented many times on the difficulties presented to transit agencies with the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. One of the biggest difficulties is the bill created an unfunded mandate that transit agencies need to provide services to those with disabilities but provided no money to actually provide the service.

Notice, I am NOT saying that people with disabilities should not have transportation however, what we have to recognize the the service is costly and the funding has to come out of a transit agencies operating budget which means that route service has to be cut to provide paratransit service.

Depending on the transit agency, the average cost to provide service is anywhere from $25.00 to $35.00 per rider which is several times higher than providing regular bus service or even more times higher per passenger for most light rail services.

However, the ADA did not just require transit agencies to provide a totally separate transit system. It also required transit agencies to make their regular bus service accessible. At first this included adding wheel chair lifts. For some agencies such as RTD in Los Angeles this was not a big deal since they started ordering buses with wheelchair lifts back in 1977 with the 200 buses they received from American Motors General.

Gradually transit bus manufacturers and transit agencies transitioned from high floor buses with wheelchair lifts to low floor buses. While the wheelchair lifts were expensive to maintain the low floor buses have their own disadvantages including lower passenger capacity and other design issues.

To reduce the cost of Paratransit service transit service has a couple of alternatives to make it more efficient.

Once solution that many transit agencies have done is contracting out Paratransit service to private operators. Of course transit agencies are ripped to shreds over the service provided by the contractors and how they do not care about the disabled. The question has to be asked, since the service is essentially a glorified taxi service and not true transit service, are transit agencies doing the right thing by contracting out the service.

Another way to reduce the price of Paratransit service is for agencies to limit those who ride paratransit service to those most in need. Those who do not meet the standards for Paratransit service then have to ride regular bus service. While that reduces cost it is also fodder for activist and also slows down regular transit service since it takes longer to get those people on and off the bus service.

A third way that transit agencies are reducing the cost of Paratransit service is to only provide service to the 3/4 of a mile limit from a regular bus routes that is mandated federally. Once again this is extremely controversial and is blasted by those located outside that service area.

Finally you have the Flex and Call N Ride routes that Denver and Salt Lake have implemented that provides both regular route and off route service with small vans that substitute for regular paratransit service.

Whichever route a transit agency decides to take to reduce the cost of Paratransit service, they will be criticized for the decisions they will make. However, transit systems have a fine balancing act of providing transit service to the maximum number of people possible with limited funds (that are even more limited during these economic times).

Of course the ultimate solution would be to build livable cities that someone with limited mobility can get the services they need without long trips. One of the often overlooked aspects of livable development is that if people with disabilities are able to live with easy reach of businesses and services they use frequently, they fewer trips they will need on Paratransit service.

Until then transit agencies will have to continue to do the balancing act will continue between cost and needs.

What is Costing UTA?

UTA Route 45 Gillig Advantage
Originally uploaded by jmdspk

Today I will begin a four part series on what is really costing the UTA. As regular readers will know, I have been critical of organizations such as the Anti-Hunger Coalition and the Transit Riders Union as they often become pawns of anti-transit forces and also demonize the rail program as being cause of all the problems.

However, in this series I will point out the most costly program the UTA has to deal with and that is satisfying ADA requirements. Let me make it clear I am not trying to debate the needs of the ADA, I am point out what it cost to deal with it. In part one I will deal with the regular bus system, in part two I will discuss Flextrans and in part three I will go over the latest demands of the ADA, and fourth I will discuss some solutions.

In the late 70's wheelchair lifts started appearing on buses. The SCRTD in Los Angeles was one of the first agencies to purchase them with their AMG buses in 1977. However, until the ADA took effect, most transit agencies avoided them.

One of the problems with wheelchair lifts is that they can be extremely costly to operate and have been prone to multiple troubles. In addition the sidewalks need to be designed to be able to let the driver safely deploy the lift and everyone familiar with Salt Lake area sidewalks know they were not designed for that.

As a solution to problem of the lifts the bus manufacturers started coming out with low floor buses such as the Gillig Advantage pictured operating on route 45.

The idea of the low floor bus first came out with the Transbus program by the Federal Government in the late 70's. However most of the current bus manufacturers pulled out the program due to escalating cost, however when the ADA came along the bus manufacturers again started looking at the low floor buses.

There is two advantages of low floor buses:
-No Wheelchair Lift
-Faster loading and unloading of passengers if the transit system takes advantage of them (which UTA has not except in the poorly design BRT scheme on 3500 South).

There also several disadvantages:
-Reduced Seating Capacity
-Increase maintenance cost especially the front end
-Not Customer Friendly

There is other issues but those can be traced to poor build quality due to the transit systems not holding the manufacturers feet to the fire to build a better bus.

In conclusion, transit systems lost capacity and faced increased cost to cooperate the ADA. However, the real cost is Paratransit and in the next part of series I will go over the cost of providing Paratransit (Flextrans) service.