ACTION ALERT: DOT will hold Public Meeting on proposed changes to DOT ADA Regulations

From Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund (8.13.10):

ADA Transportation Advocates: ACTION NEEDED NOW

DOT will hold Public Meeting including call-ins on proposed changes to DOT ADA Regulation

Friday, August 20, 2010
10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern time

(DOT also is re-opening its rulemaking docket from Aug. 19 - 25, 2010)

Can you call into public meeting and offer testimony?
Must be specifically tailored to the two subjects below:

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is proposing important positive changes to its ADA regulation that are being very strongly resisted by most public transportation providers. Disability advocates’ support of the DOT proposals is crucial to the outcome.

DOT proposes to require all publicly funded transit providers to make reasonable modifications of policies, practices, and procedures in order to avoid discrimination

DOT proposes to require all new Amtrak and commuter rail stations to provide full platform access

Particularly needed are personal experiences (in person in DC, or by phone) on two subjects:

Riders of public transit (including buses, trains, and ADA paratransit) who have needed minor modifications of policies, practices, or procedures that transit agency would not provide. For example, someone with diabetes who must eat at a certain hour rode the subway but was disallowed from eating due to a general no-eating policy; someone who must use a specific seat on a vehicle for a disability-related reason; someone who needed a bus to reposition slightly in order to board, due to construction barrier or snowdrift, for a disability-related reason; etc.

Wheelchair users wanting to ride Amtrak who had problems boarding or disembarking, due to Amtrak's reliance on a portable lift, rather than being able to board the train directly from a high-level boarding platform.

Also greatly needed are advocates who wish to speak at the public meeting (in person or by phone) on the importance of these issues to the disability community. Learn more about them from DREDF's docket comments at the link below. Feel free to use any of these arguments, or others of your own. There is no need to mention or cite DREDF:

http://dredf.org/transportation/draftcoments6_06.html

IF YOU WILL SPEAK AT DOT PUBLIC MEETING:

Call in advance to DOT's Office of the Assistant General Counsel for Regulation and Enforcement at 202-366-4723, or e-mail laura.reeves@dot.gov

You may also submit written comments (include "Office of the Secretary, DOT" and the Docket ID Number OST-2006-23985) by any of the following methods:

Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to http://www.regulations.gov and follow the online instructions for submitting comments.

Mail: Docket Management Facility
U.S. Department of Transportation
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE.,
West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140
Washington, DC 20590-0001

Fax: 202-493-2251

See DOT's announcement of the public meeting and docket re-opening at:

HTML
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2010/2010-19673.htm

PDF
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2010/pdf/2010-19673.pdf

Comments

[Jason Olsen]

A COPY OF MY LETTER TO MARC. HAD TO MOVE CLOSER SINCE NOTHING CHANGED!

To Whom It May Concern,

I have been a MARC passenger for approximately 4 months now and have had some pretty bad personal experiences thus far as a full time wheelchair user. While I cannot state that this is an issue with EVERY employee I have encountered I must say that there does seem to be a systemic problem concerning proper safety measures on the MARC.
Some of my major concerns include:

1. Safety: There does not seem to be a set procedure for clearing the accessible seating section. A few employees have asked the already onboard patrons to move and allow the entire section to be cleared so that I can parallel park in the section. However, this is more of an exception then the rule. Normally the employee will simply stick their head in and say “I have a wheelchair coming on” and one person will move. This allows one seat to be flipped up. I am then required to park my wheelchair with my feet in the aisle. This leads to people tripping over my feet on a daily basis and has at times left my feet bruised (which could potentially lead to sores due to a lack of circulation and feeling). There is also the risk that these people will trip over my feet and hurt themselves. On a few occasions no one has moved and I was left in the aisle. One 2 occasions the conductor hit the brakes and I almost flew down the stairs to the bottom floor of the train.

2. Courtesy: Item 2 is a general lack of courtesy on the part of the employees. I have actually witnessed on one occasion an employee cursing when he saw me because he had to get the bridge plate. On a separate occasion an employee would not come out of the train and help me onto it, to the dismay of another employee who complained about the first gentlemen not doing his job (this also happened with the same crew on the way home). On more than one occasion the employees have “forgotten” me. One time this meant that I was taken 5 stops passed my destination and the train was emptied and shut down before I could get the attention of an employee. I then had to wait an hour for a return train to get back to my destination. Another time I sat at Union Station until I could once again yell for a fellow train rider to get someone to let me off. Most employees make me wait to be absolutely the last person off the train as though I do not also have a schedule. This de-boarding process and then appearance of the employee can take quite awhile in the mornings and I am disappointed that I am relegated to the train until then.

3. Departures: finally I would like to address the location of some of the departing trains. In particular I would like to address the trains that leave out of Union Station that require wheelchair users to first find a MARC employee to take them down to the track. Then the person in the wheelchair is forced to cross a few sets of train tracks finally to be cranked to the level of the train. I can not grasp how in the Nations Capital this is an acceptable practice. If there is snow on the ground, like last month, this passage is impossible to traverse and frankly dangerous. These tracks can catch wheelchair casters and require a good deal of effort to get over. I am also shocked in the amount of time that it takes to track down a MARC employee who can take someone down to the tracks to even get on the train.

I truly hope that you can look into these matters and at the very least issue some training to your employees concerning the safety and respectful treatment of people with disabilities.

Regards,
Jason Olsen

[chronograph]

This post really makes you
think about how certain problems require that you do quite a bit of research before
finding "good data" that will answer a question in part or provide part of the solution.