With California’s disabled and senior populations projected to grow dramatically in coming years, transit agencies are implementing programs that advance equity and improve customer experience. 
By Arianna Smith
Managing Editor
Transit California
This July, Americans will celebrate the 33rd anniversary of the landmark federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which established disability rights as civil rights. During the three decades since the ADA’s passage, the application of this law has removed barriers for people with disabilities who want to access, participate in, and enjoy public spaces, the workplace, and civic life. For public transit providers, the law sparked an ongoing revolution in planning, improving, and upgrading transit infrastructure, in providing accommodations for a variety of physical and cognitive disabilities, and in presenting accessible information to would-be riders.
To ensure accessibility to transit services, California’s transit agencies follow Title II of the ADA, which prohibits discrimination based on disability on public transportation and requires transit providers to serve people with disabilities by making reasonable accommodations. Operators of fixed route services like buses and rail adhere to numerous carefully considered requirements that accommodate a variety of disabilities. For those with sight or cognitive impairments, transit vehicle operators or automated annunciation systems must announce stops and other important information, and there must be high contrast signage on fixed route vehicles and at stops to make locations clear. To accommodate those with physical or mobility disabilities, vehicles must have wheelchair access lifts and ramps, appropriately placed handrails, and reachable stop pull cords or buttons. Service dogs (although not emotional support animals) must be permitted to board vehicles.
For those who cannot use public transportation due to their disabilities, agencies must provide paratransit services within ¾ mile of regular transit bus or rail services, although fares are not required to be the same as fixed routes. (For more information, see Transit California’s 2022 article about paratransit services.) Finally, disabled riders may submit specific accommodation requests to transit providers to ensure that they can access services.
California public transit agencies have implemented numerous strategies that go beyond simple compliance with the ADA and relevant state laws in order to prioritize the needs of riders with disabilities and continually improve services for all riders. This forward-facing attitude is especially urgent in California, where the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 7.6 million adults (equal to 1 in 4 adults) in the state have a disability. People with disabilities are more likely to be low-income and live in a household with no personal vehicle; therefore, it should come as no surprise that they make more public transit trips compared to those without disabilities.
“When everyone has access to transportation, the Bay Area is a better place to live and work,” said the Access, Equity, and Mobility website of Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the agency which coordinates transit services amongst nine Bay Area counties. MTC’s most recent Coordinated Public Transit-Human Services Transportation Plan from 2018 estimated that at least 10% of the region’s population lives with a disability, and it projects that the region’s senior population will grow from 14% to 23% by 2040. The agency anticipates a major role for public transit in providing much-needed accommodations for this growing population, but it also acknowledges existing challenges to serving riders with disabilities.
MTC’s Coordinated Plan lists several barriers to public transit for disabled Bay Area riders, many of which are common across communities in California. For instance, “transfers on both the fixed-route transit network as well as between ADA Paratransit service providers (when trips cross county lines, for example) are barriers.” Additionally, “paratransit fares are unaffordable for many people in parts of the Bay Area,” and gaps in service – both to and from locations that have insufficient or no accessible service, as well as times of day when there is insufficient or no service – create further challenges to people with disabilities who want and need access to public transit services.
MTC and others have begun to address these concerns through county-based mobility management, which can provide services not just to persons with disabilities, but to those who are seniors and/or part of a low-income household. Under this framework, mobility managers at the county level become a single point of contact to assess a rider’s transit service needs, arrange training on how to use transit, and provide fare subsidies. They may also help customers plan point-to-point rides and transfers.
For some riders with disabilities, transfers between vehicles on the way to a single destination can be a major barrier to accessing transit. This can be especially problematic for paratransit riders with trips that travel through regions served by different providers (and, in many cases, transfer multiple times between these providers).
“As you can imagine, these regional transfer trips are time-consuming, challenging to schedule, and costly for all parties,” said Christy Wegener, Executive Director of the Livermore Amador Valley Transit Authority, also known as Wheels. Recognizing this burden on these vulnerable riders, Wheels and several other East Bay transit agencies are collaborating on a pilot program to provide a simple, single ride that prioritizes safety and convenience. “This innovative One Seat Ride (OSR) pilot service was born out of an opportunity created by the COVID-19 pandemic when agencies were faced with trying to implement social distancing and minimize the number of times paratransit riders came into contact with other riders as well as drivers. At the onset, the focus was on targeting regional trips where clients needed to make a transfer between paratransit providers to complete their one-way journey.” County Connection of Concord, Tri Delta Transit of Eastern Contra Costa County, and the Western Contra Costa Transit Authority (WestCAT) are also pilot project participants.
“The idea for OSR is simple and brilliant,” continued Wegener. “Instead of each of us deploying separate resources to complete a multi-legged one-way trip, let's instead allow the passenger to remain on one vehicle for their entire one-way trip for any trips being taken in our collective service areas. This eliminates unnecessary dwell/wait time at transfer locations, reduces costs and frustration, and vastly improves the customer experience.”
As transit agencies have added customer services online, it’s become increasingly important – and in some cases, required by law – to provide accessible websites and apps to serve would-be riders with disabilities. Access Services, which serves as the ADA paratransit provider for Los Angeles County, recognizes that individuals accessing its online content may be more likely than the general population to have special accessibility needs. As a result, the organization has designed its website with accessible features that go beyond federal Section 508 information and communication technology requirements and guidelines, and which “that enable a variety of users to read, understand, navigate, contribute and interact with its content.” These include optimization for screen readers, adjustable font size and high color contrast, accessible content including image description tags, and accessible contact forms.
Even in the face of ongoing fiscal challenges, California public transit agencies are committed to centering the improvement of services that meet the needs of riders with disabilities – at stops, in vehicles, and online. In doing so, agencies advance equity and improve all riders’ experiences.