KCATA Marks Anniversary Of Americans With Disabilities Act
Recognized for Excellence in Public Transit
KCATA Marks Anniversary Of Americans With Disabilities Act
(Kansas City, Mo. – July 20, 2015) What Rosa Parks meant for racial equality in public transportation in 1955, the Americans with Disability Act meant for equality for disabled riders in public transportation 45 years later.
Twenty-five years ago this Sunday, President George H.W. Bush signed a sweeping law prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities.
It’s a historical moment that the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority will recognize as part of a national celebration.
The law guaranteed equal opportunity for people with disabilities in employment, public accommodations, transportation, government services and telecommunications.
Modeled after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the law changed the way the country treats roughly 37.6 million people with disabilities, whether that means building curb ramps, installing talking traffic signals, adding bus lifts or other measures.
In the aftermath of the law, access to public transportation for riders with disabilities improved dramatically. The percentage of buses accessible for riders with disabilities was at 51 percent in 1993, according to the American Public Transportation Association. By 2013, that number increased to 99.8 percent.
Kansas City buses are in full compliance with the law. The KCATA placed a premium on making its buses accessible even before it was enacted.
For instance in 1986, four years before the disabilities legislation was signed into law, the KCATA bought about 30 lift-equipped buses. Two years later, the KCATA acquired 69 more buses fitted with lifts. By the time Congress passed the disabilities law, a third of the KCATA’s fleet was already accessible for riders with disabilities.
Last year, there were about 20,000 wheelchair boardings on Metro buses, up from about 14,000 the year before.
Kansas City riders with disabilities also benefit from the KCATA’s Share-A-Fare program, a service required by the law that offers complementary paratransit service for riders who can’t independently use the bus.
So far this year, roughly 10,000 to 12,000 people have used Share-A-Fare, accounting for an estimated 138,000 trips. Overall, the KCATA saw 222,779 paratransit boardings last year related to the disabilities law.
Two years ago, the KCATA created the Share-A-Fare Advisory Committee to better address the concerns of riders with disabilities.
The 11-member panel’s top priorities for this year included establishing one regional process for determining who is eligible for Share-A-Fare services and developing a customer communications strategy.
The KCATA reaches out to help riders with disabilities in other ways.
It offers reduced farecard IDs so that riders with disabilities pay half of the base $1.50 fare on Metro and MAX buses and also half of the $50 bus passes. In the last three years, the KCATA has issued about 7,300 reduced farecards to riders with disabilities.
(Kansas City, Mo. – August 27, 2015) The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority has collected four awards recognizing the agency for its efforts to improve regional transit, marketing public transportation and distinguished leadership.
For the first time, the Kansas Public Transportation Association (KPTA) tapped the KCATA as Transit Service of the Year for introducing the regional RideKC brand that will unify all four regional transit agencies together under one umbrella.
Launched late last year, RideKC will unify fragmented transit services in the Kansas City region with a new look and logo for public transportation throughout the area. The RideKC initiative also will include a single regional website for riders seeking information about transit, regardless of where they live or their destination.
RideKC’s ultimate goal is to provide a unified transit system that’s seamless and easy to use for connecting people to opportunity.
The regional initiative was already highlighted by new agreements turning over management of the transit systems in Johnson County, Kan. and Independence, Mo. to the KCATA. Work also is under way to streamline the fare structure and simplify access to paratransit services across the Kansas City area.
The KPTA also gave its highest honor – the William M. Murry Award – to Chuck Ferguson, the KCATA’s chief planning officer.
Ferguson has been involved with public transit in the Kansas City area for more than 25 years, first starting at the KCATA in 1989. A couple years later, Ferguson moved over to Johnson County where he helped grow the system into an award-winning suburban service.
Returning to the KCATA this year as the agency’s top planner, Ferguson is intimately involved in the efforts to build a seamless regional transit network. He served one unfulfilled term as president of the Kansas Public Transportation Association and was later elected president twice.
The KCATA’s communication and marketing efforts received national recognition when they won first-place awards handed out this month out by the American Public Transportation Association in the annual 2015 AdWheel competition.
The KCATA won first place for promoting a new compressed natural gas fueling station and a series of brochures explaining the bus system for prospective riders.
More than 10,000 of the colorful, glossy brochures were distributed in less than six months after they were published in 2014.
The AdWheel prizes are awarded for five main categories and are evaluated by industry peers, based on the following parameters: target audience, situation/challenge for creating the entry, strategy/objective of the entry and the results/impact of the entry. KCATA competed against transit systems between 4 million and 20 million riders per year for the award.
The KCATA will be officially honored for its work at the American Public Transportation Association’s annual meeting in San Francisco in October.