Justice For All
jfa@jfanow.org
Action Alert on Greyhound and Other Over-the-road Buses
Marilyn Golden of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund
(DREDF) writes:
UPDATE AND CALL FOR ACTION!!!!
on GREYHOUND (and other over-the-road bus) ADA REQUIREMENTS
Below is a letter the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund
(DREDF) is sending to Rodney Slater, Secretary of the Department of Transportation (DOT),
and DOT Acting General Counsel Lindy Knapp. You are encouraged to send YOUR OWN LETTERS (not a letter identical to
DREDF's) to Secretary Slater and Acting General Counsel Lindy Knapp on the same subject, telling them it's URGENT that the Information
Collection Final Rule be published before the end of this Administration! Secretary Slater and Acting General Counsel Knapp can
be mailed at the U.S. mail addresses shown on DREDF's letter below, or e-mailed as follows:
E-mail DOT Secretary Rodney Slater through his secretary, Rose
Alford, at <rose.alford@ost.dot.gov>.
E-mail DOT Acting General Counsel Lindy Knapp through Veronica
Garrison at <veronica.garrison@ost.dot.gov>.
BACKGROUND:
In 1998, the Department of Transportation published a final rule
establishing requirements for over-the-road buses (OTRB's) used by private companies. OTRB's
are high-floor buses with baggage compartments underneath. New OTRB's used by PUBLICLY funded transit
agencies are already required by the ADA to be accessible, under DOT's original 1991 ADA regulation. And transit vehicles which are
not OTRB's (that is, urban transit buses and other vehicles such as vans for paratransit and other purposes, and rail cars) are already
required to be accessible (to various degrees) under DOT's original 1991 ADA regulation, whether
privately or publicly funded. You can access DOT's original 1991 ADA regulation on the Internet at
< http://www.fta.dot.gov/library/legal/dfregs.htm
> (see especially Appendix D). This lengthy technical regulation is largely summarized
in concise lay language in DREDF's ADA Manual, "The ADA, An Implementation Guide," also known as the Blue Book because of its
blue cover. DREDF's ADA Manual can be purchased by calling DREDF at (510) 644-2555 (voice or TTY)
and asking the receptionist for ordering information.
The newer 1998 over-the-road bus regulation posed different
requirements for different kinds of privately funded transit systems using
OTRB's. A summary of the 1998 Final Regulation can be found on DREDF's website at
http://dredf.org/otrb.html. For companies
operating fixed route transit systems such as Greyhound, the 1998 regulation required all new buses to be accessible, so bus fleets
will reach 100% accessibility gradually as buses are replaced. During the period until all
OTRB's are accessible, a person with a disability has the right to ride an accessible bus if she provides 48
hours advance notice. This right is currently in effect for Greyhound in most circumstances based on a settlement agreement between the
Department of Justice and Greyhound (see < http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/greyfact.htm
>).
THE PROBLEM:
BUT an important piece of the DOT regulation is STILL MISSING. If the
would-be rider who requested an accessible bus arrives at the bus station or tour
company and the bus is not accessible, how can she show that an accessible bus was, in fact, requested? It is this type
of question that the Information Collection rule was designed by DOT to answer. Will it be by confirmation number? Will a copy of a form
merely be mailed to the requester (which is unlikely to reach him or her in 48 hours)? What obligation will the company have to document
these requests? Will the company be required to document failure to provide accessible
service? Or will there be no requirement at all? Without such documentation, it's "our word against theirs," making it
far more difficult to show discrimination occurred and thus, to remedy it. The Information Collection rule, which we urgently need
DOT to publish in final form BEFORE THE END OF THIS ADMINISTRATION, is the last chapter in the battle for strong ADA requirements which
give people with disabilities the right to ride Greyhound and other over-the-road buses like everyone else.
More about the importance of the Information Collection regulation is
in DREDF's letter below.
When the Information Collection regulation is finally published,
DREDF will update our summary, develop an analysis of all the relevant requirements, and distribute
it widely.
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
On November 14, the American Bus Association's (ABA's) lawsuit
prevailed against DOT, invalidating one portion of the OTRB rule: the denied boarding
compensation provision. This loss occurred in the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, and no appeal to
the U.S. Supreme Court is expected. As you may remember, the ABA took DOT to court over the entire regulation, but DOT prevailed at the
lower court level. ABA appealed the lower court's decision, but only on the one issue of denied boarding compensation. This decision
invalidates the provision in DOT's 1998 regulation which would have required companies
like Greyhound to pay compensation between $300 and $700 to a passenger with a disability if the company failed to
provide an accessible bus at the passenger's request. However, all the other provisions of the 1998 OTRB regulation are still intact.
People who experience discrimination because the requirements are violated can still pursue the same enforcement and remedies available
for other violations of the ADA's requirements: filing administrative complaints with the Department of
Justice, filing lawsuits, etc.
If you have ADA questions about these subjects or any others, please
call DREDF's ADA Hotline at (800) 466-4232 (voice or TTY).
--
November 29, 2000
Secretary Rodney Slater
Department of Transportation
400 Seventh Street S.W.
Washington D.C. 20590
and
Acting General Counsel Lindy Knapp
Department of Transportation
400 Seventh Street S.W.
Washington D.C. 20590
Dear Secretary Slater and Acting General Counsel Knapp:
As this administration draws to a close, the disability
community can look back on some important achievements at DOT over the past few years. Most
noteworthy are the publishing of the final rule under the Americans with Disabilities Act on over-the-road buses
(OTRB's) used by private companies and the letters interpreting ADA paratransit capacity constraints by the Federal Transit
Administration.
However, there is one extremely important piece of unfinished
business: publication of the final rule on Information Collection for OTRB's under the ADA. This
final rule has been pending for more than a year and a half. It is urgent that it be published in this
administration. Department staff has promised the disability community many times that such publication would occur. Alarmingly,
staff comments recently have been less certain. As the clock ticks, we are very anxious that
this regulation may be too unimportant to DOT to be prioritized highly enough to ensure final publication. If
the Information Collection rule isn't published soon, it will truly diminish the Department's achievement in publishing the final OTRB
regulation in 1998.
Information Collection may sound like an unimportant topic,
but in this case, it is actually very important. As you know, the final rule on OTRB's requires only
new buses to be accessible, so bus fleets reach 100% accessibility gradually as buses are replaced.
During the period until all OTRB's are accessible, a person with a disability has the right to ride an accessible bus if she provides 48
hours advance notice. But if she arrives at the bus station or tour company and the requested
bus is not accessible, how can she show that access was, in fact, requested? It is this type of question that
DOT designed the Information Collection rule to answer. Will it be by confirmation number? Will a copy of a form merely be mailed to the
requester (which is unlikely to reach him or her in 48 hours)? What obligation will
the company have to document these requests? Will the company be required to document failure to provide accessible
service? Or will there be no requirement at all? Without such documentation, it's "our word against theirs," making it far more
difficult to show discrimination occurred and thus, to remedy it. It was clearly
DOT's intent to require this documentation, since it appeared in the 1998 Final Rule, but since it had not appeared in the
proposed rule, DOT found it necessary to solicit public comment. Until this final rule is published, the benefits of DOT's 1998 OTRB
rule are blunted, to say the least, and the rights of people with disabilities to ride Greyhound and other services using OTRB's are
not complete.
DOT's proposed rule would also have required that companies
submit data on how many accessible and inaccessible vehicles have been purchased, as well as
the size of the operators' fleets. This is another crucially important requirement. In the area of publicly
funded transit, it is generally a matter of public record what accessible vehicles have been purchased. But in the private sector,
the disability community has had no way to find out if private companies are meeting their ADA
vehicle purchase requirements. Such a reporting requirement will be essential to any serious enforcement
effort.
Secretary Slater, many of us in the disability community have
come to respect your leadership as a rare and positive example. While large organizations are
difficult to change, some important things that you had the opportunity to affect were done right during your
time at DOT. Secretary Slater and Acting General Counsel Knapp, we urgently need your commitment to civil rights and disability rights
again. It will be extremely disappointing to the disability community and very damaging to our civil rights under the ADA if DOT cannot
finish the job and publish the final Final Rule on OTRB's during this administration.
Sincerely yours,
Marilyn Golden
Policy Analyst
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund
cc:
Robert Ashby, Department of Transportation
Ron Stroman, Department of Transportation
Marc Brenman, Department of Transportation
Patrick Reilly, Federal Transit Administration
Arthur Lopez, Federal Transit Administration
Michael Winter, Federal Transit Administration
Mort Halperin, State Department
Wade Henderson, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
Sid Goldstein, Transit Access Report
Justin Dart, Justice for All
Andy Imparato, American Association of People with Disabilities
Stephanie Thomas and Bob Kafka, ADAPT
Mike Auberger, ADAPT
Mike Oxford, ADAPT
Steve Gold, Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia
James Weisman, Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association
Maureen McCloskey, Paralyzed Veterans of America
Julie Carroll
Marca Bristo, National Council on Disability
Kathleen Blank, National Council on Disability
Curt Decker, National Association of Protection and Advocacy Systems
--
Marilyn
Golden
mgolden@wli.net
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund
--
Fred Fay
Chair, Justice For
All
jfa@jfanow.org
http://www.jfanow.org
=====================================================================
Justice-For-All FREE Subscriptions
To subscribe or unsubscribe, send mail to
majordomo@JFANOW.ORG
with one or the other in the body of your message:
subscribe justice
unsubscribe justice