Access to Over-the-Road Buses for Persons With Disabilities Page: 68
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68 Over-the-Road Bus Access
to and from intercity bus stops and acted as ticket
agents for Greyhound, selling intercity bus tickets
along with the regular transit service fee. Between
1987 and the beginning of the Greyhound strike
in 1990, the program allowed Greyhound to add
941 points to its fixed-route service.86The strike
and the company's subsequent bankruptcy filing,
however, placed the program on hold in all but a
few communities.
The greatest concern surrounding RCP was the
lack of ridership.87 After almost 2 years of
operation, the program had generated 2,744 total
trips, with average ridership for individual transit
agencies ranging from O to 64 trips monthly .88
Local operators offered the following reasons for
the program's inability to attract passengers: lack
of advertising funds made marketing difficult;
Greyhound marketing materials were ill-suited to
small community needs; and intercity coaches
often arrived during hours not covered by local
providers. In addition, many rural transit opera-
tors serve primarily human service agency clients,
and have limited abilities to serve the general
public.89
Another reason for the program's low ridership
was that Greyhound was unable to serve a portion
of the Section 18 operators' clientele-
individuals with disabilities, In fact, Minnesota's
State Department of Transportation declared that
it would not support the participation of its
Section 18 operators in RCP in view of the
inaccessibility of Greyhound's OTRBs.90OTRB ACCESSIBILITY PRIOR TO THE
AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT
Legislative Precedents, 1970 to 1990
Twenty years of legislation, rulemaking, and
court decisions involving access to publicly
funded transportation preceded the 1990 enact-
ment of the ADA.91 Milestones during that time
included:
* In 1970, the Urban Mass Transportation
Assistance Act established as national pol-
icy that individuals with disabilities have
equal right of access to publicly assisted
mass transportation facilities and services,
and that planning and design of such facili-
ties and services should assure that right. It
authorized the use of up to 3.5 percent of
total mass transit appropriations for imp-
roved access. But suits brought by individ-
uals with disabilities claiming that public
transit authorities must now purchase acces-
sible vehicles were dismissed by the courts.
* In 1973, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation
Act became law, stating that: "No otherwise
qualified handicapped individual . . . shall,
solely by reason of his handicap, be ex-
cluded from the participation in, be denied
the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimina-
tion under any program or activity receiving
Federal financial assistance. "92
* In 1976, the Urban Mass Transportation
Administration (UMTA, now FTA) of DOT
adopted regulations requiring public transit$6 Ecosometncs, Inc., op. cit., footnote 16, P.19.
87 In 1987, the State of Michigan instituted its own connector program with FTA support, providing funds to local transit agencies to conduct
the service. By the spring of 1991, Michigan'sRCP had attracted moreridership than Greyhound's national version. OnceFTA funding ended,
however, even these ridership levels could not justify continuance of the program, which continued to lose money.
88 U.S. Department of Transportation, op. cit., footnote 84, p. s-11.
89 Isaacs, op. cit., footnote 59.
90 David Raphael, executive director, Community Transportation Association of America, personal communication, July 18, 1991; and
Randy lsaacs, Isaacs & Associates, personal communication, Oct. 6, 1992.
91The following material is based on Paul Stephen Dempsey, "The Civil Rights of the Handicapped in Transportation: The Americans With
Disabilities Act and Related Legislation, ' Transportation Law Journal vol. 19, No. 2, 1991, pp. 314-317,
92Public Law 93.112, approved Sept. 26, 1973, 29 USC794.
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United States. Congress. Office of Technology Assessment. Access to Over-the-Road Buses for Persons With Disabilities, report, May 1993; [Washington D.C.]. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc40036/m1/74/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.