Buttigieg touts gains in accessibility efforts
But he reiterates there's still much to be done
By: Zach Wichter
USA Today
..... The Department of Transportation has poured billions into accessibility efforts and Pete Buttigieg wants you to know it;s yielding results.
.....
The department has invested over the last few years in improvements meant to make the nation;s transpiration system more accessible to people with disabilities, including 45 billion in airport improvements and $1 billion in rail transit accessibility upgrades. In a conversation with USA Today, the secretary of transportation emphasized how crucial those improvements have been to his department's mission. However, he understands there's still a lot of difficult work to be done to make equal access a reality.
..... As the Paralympics kick off in Paris, the DOT released a video highlighting some of the recent infrastructure improvements in which the agency has invested.
Is transportation in the US accessible?
..... Even the DOT's own video admits there;s a lot of work to be done.
..... Within the first minute, senator Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, and former Paralympic basketball player Matt Scott, shared how they've both had their wheelchairs damaged 'countless" times by airlines.
..... According to the DOT's statistics, airlines typically mishandle 1%-1.5% of the mobility devices they carry, equating to 11,527 reports of damages in 2023.
..... To that end, the DOT in February [2024] proposed a new rule to penalize airlines more harshly when they damage wheelchairs.
..... "Every wheelchair suer i know who has traveled by air has some kind of horror story, some kind of incident or set of incidents they experience, and I'm convinced that a lot of those could have been prevented through the kind of accountability that we're trying to deliver with this rule," Buttigieg said. "This is about practices and procedures and policies. It's about accountability,"
.....
Even beyond the aviation sector, Buttigieg said, accessibility remains an issue for getting around. Much of the country's rail infrastructure, for example, was built before the Americans with disabilities Act was enacted and is not required to be retrofitted.
..... "That's a huge problem for people who count on them"" Buttigieg said. "It's not that the transit agencies don't want to improve them, but they lack the funding."
How is the department improving accessibility?
..... Buttigieg said the DOT is working to improve accessibility by funding more projects as well as increasing penalties when transpiration providers flout the rules.
.....
"The big part of what it's doing is defining a new standard for safe and dignified assistance, because a lot of this is things like how personnel are trained and what happens when there is an incident," he added.
..... The DOT is also working to provide more communities with funding and resources to make their road and pedestrian infrastructure more accessible.
.....
Buttigieg is optimistic that the current projects are a model for the future of accessibility improvements. Of course, depending on the outcome of the 2024 presidential election in November, it's possible that priorities around transportation accessibility will shift in the new year. [2025]
..... It's one thing to get the funding lined up. It's another to make suer the construction is successful. ... Now we're really moving into the phase where more and more of it is about the construction and the completion of the projects, not just the announcement of the dollars," he said.