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Mayor's Task Force on Persons with Disabilities

Transportation Committee

The Transportation Committee acts a liaison between the City of Stockton and its citizens in providing direction on accessibility issues regarding transportation in the Stockton area. The committee works closely with the city to ensure that various transportation needs are being addressed concerning the paratransit system. Citizens of Stockton are welcome to attend meetings to discuss ways to improve the present system

Among the protections afforded individuals with disabilities by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) is the right of equal access to transportation. Access to transportation is essential if the other major provisions of the ADA -- access to employment, public services, and places of public accommodation -- are to be realized. The Harris Survey of Disabled Americans, for example, cited 28 percent of nonworking people with disabilities as indicating that a dearth of accessible or affordable transportation was an important reason why they were not employed (Louis Harris and Associates, 1986).

While the ADA is clearly intended to protect the rights of people with mental impairments as well as those with physical disabilities, efforts to gain compliance with the ADA have been presented and understood as a purely physical phenomenon--building ramps, adding hand rails, and providing communication aids and other methods and devices normally associated with people who have sensory and physical disabilities. Likewise, in the transit industry, primary attention has been focused on the acquisition of accessible vehicles for individuals with physical disabilities.

Indicators corroborating this lack of attention to the issue of cognitive impairment in people with either mental or physical disabilities have come from government, the business sector and disability advocacy organizations, such as:

• Respond to the needs of people with mental retardation and related disabilities.
• Focus on two major elements--signage and customer service/communications and develop strategies to provide equal access for people with cognitive and physical impairments.
• Attend to the needs of persons with disabilities and any resource materials needed for their respective use.
• Assist in the development of training materials.

Goals and Objectives:

• To develop quality indicators of what knowledge, attitudes and behaviors are needed to assist and accommodate people with disabilities who may have cognitive impairments, and assess transit personnel training curricula based on these quality indicators.
• Construct a list of quality indicators of information, activities and other training transit personnel need to enable them to adequately assist and accommodate people with various disabilities who may have cognitive impairments.
• Collect and assess current disability training curricula for transit personnel.
• Outline and review training information and activities necessary to meet the training needs of transit personnel identified above.
• To develop a quality interactive training curriculum for transit personnel to improve their knowledge, attitudes and behaviors regarding assisting and accommodating people with disabilities who may have cognitive impairments.
• Develop an interview instrument and conduct interviews to solicit information from transit personnel on concerns, experiences and barriers they have in assisting individuals with cognitive disabilities.
• Develop an interview instrument and conduct interviews to solicit information from individuals with disabilities involving cognitive impairments regarding their experiences and concerns in using public transportation.
• Using information gleaned from interviews and list of knowledge, attitudes and behaviors needed by transit personnel, draft interactive training program.
• Involve local steering committee in review of successive drafts of the training program.
• Conduct field-test of the training program with two groups of bus operators at SJRTD.

Future initiatives will include the creation and publication of training programs that will assist transit personnel in use of an interactive training curriculum which addresses disability and cognitive impairments through dissemination of the curriculum's availability to the nation's transit systems, disseminate training program to each city and county department of transportation and to state transportation steering committee as well as publicize availability of other national disability organizations transportation guidelines and selected media serving the transit industry.

• Summary of Committees
• Education & Employment
• Housing
• Transportation
• Youth & Community Development

• Stockton's ADA Self-Evaluation & Transition Plan Summary (pdf)