Cars, Transit, and the Disabled — Blogs

One com­mon argu­ment against vir­tu­al­ly any pol­i­cy might incon­ve­nience dri­vers is that dis­abled peo­ple can­not walk and thus need to dri­ve, and that pro-pedes­tri­an poli­cies there­fore con­sti­tute ableism. It seems to me this argu­ment is based on a cer­tain stereo­type of dis­abled Amer­i­cans: as mid­dle- car-own­ing senior cit­i­zens whose dis­abil­i­ty requires a wheel­chair, and who nev­er walk, and who can­not rely on pub­lic tran­sit. But a 2017 Bureau of Trans­porta­tion Sta­tis­tics (BTS) sur­vey shows that this stereo­type is inac­cu­rate in a vari­ety of ways. 

First of all, the major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans who have a trans­porta­tion-lim­it­ing dis­abil­i­ty are under 65: out of 25 Amer­i­cans with a mobil­i­ty-relat­ed dis­abil­i­ty, only 11.2 mil­lion are over 65. Only 11.6 per­cent of Amer­i­cans with mobil­i­ty-relat­ed dis­abil­ties (or “MDs” for short) use wheel­chairs, about half the per­cent­age of MDs who use walk­ers (22.9 per­cent) and one- the num­ber who use canes (36.7 per­cent). 42.2 per­cent of MDs use no med­ical devices at all to help them get around.

Sec­ond, most younger MDs are not mid­dle-class. More than half of under-65 MDs live in house­holds with incomes under $25,000, and only 20 per­cent of them work at all (as opposed to three-quar­ters of oth­er Amer­i­cans under 65). Almost half of this 20 per­cent (46.8 of them) work part-time. (Because many over-65 Amer­i­cans are retired, I sus­pect that trans­porta­tion-dis­abled are even less like­ly to work; how­ev­er, the study adds no rel­e­vant to this point.) 

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, many of these dis­abled Amer­i­cans do not dri­ve. Near­ly 40 per­cent of MDs do not dri­ve cars them­selves, as opposed to 8.3 per­cent of nondis­abled Amer­i­cans. Many of these peo­ple, of course, live with some­one who does dri­ve. Even so, MDs are more like­ly to be car-free than the rest of us: 22.5 per­cent of all non­work­ing MDs under 65 live in house­holds with­out cars, as do 12.2 per­cent of the minor­i­ty of MDs who work. In each of these cat­e­gories, MDs are more like­ly to be in zero-vehi­cle house­holds than nondis­abled Amer­i­cans. For exam­ple, only 3.9 per­cent of non-dis­abled, employed work­ers under 65 live in zero-vehi­cle house­holds.

As a result, MDs are less like­ly to use cars for most trips than their non-dis­abled coun­ter­parts. Employed MDs under 65 dri­ve them­selves on 54.5 per­cent of trips, while near­ly three-quar­ters of nondis­abled work­ers under 65 do so. Non­work­ing MDs do so for only 42.6 per­cent of trips, as opposed to only 58.3 per­cent of non-dis­abled unem­ployed. MDs get rides from oth­er dri­vers, how­ev­er, for a lit­tle over 1/4 of all their trips (31 per­cent for non­work­ers, 23.5 per­cent for work­ers).

Even though many trans­porta­tion-dis­abled Amer­i­cans have dif­fi­cul­ty walk­ing, are still more like­ly to walk to most trips than the non-dis­abled. Accord­ing to BTS, employed MDs “walk for a slight­ly share of trips than work­ers with­out dis­abil­i­ties (14.6 v. 13.0 per­cent)”.

Because not all bus­es and trains com­ply with the Amer­i­cans with Dis­abil­i­ties Act, one might think that dis­abled peo­ple are less like­ly to use pub­lic trans­porta­tion than oth­er Amer­i­cans. But this is not the case. Employed MDs under 65 use local tran­sit on 4.3 per­cent of all trips, as opposed to 2.7 per­cent for their nondis­abled coun­ter­parts. Sim­i­lar­ly, non­work­ing MDs under 65 use tran­sit for 5.9 per­cent of all trips, as opposed to 3.3 per­cent for their nondis­abled coun­ter­parts. This data does not include para­tran­sit, which is used far less fre­quent­ly; rough­ly 1.5 per­cent of trips by trans­porta­tion-dis­abled Amer­i­cans are on para­tran­sit. Thus, the notion that para­tran­sit is a use­ful sub­sti­tute for local tran­sit seems to be incor­rect, at least for many dis­abled Amer­i­cans.  

What about the seniors with mobil­i­ty impair­ments? Sure­ly one might think that they dri­ve more than any­one else, since the abil­i­ty to walk declines with age. This is only par­tial­ly true: even though senior MDs are dri­ven around more than the younger dis­abled, they are not sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to dri­ve than non-dis­abled seniors. Senior MDs dri­ve them­selves for only 47.8 per­cent of all trips (com­pared to 69.3 per­cent for non-dis­abled seniors). 

Senior MDs use pub­lic tran­sit less than younger MDs, but they nev­er­the­less do so more than non-dis­abled seniors: they use local tran­sit for 2.8 per­cent of all trips, while nondis­abled seniors use tran­sit for 1.8 per­cent of trips. Senior MDs use para­tran­sit less than non­se­niors; they only use it for 0.9 per­cent of all trips—additional evi­dence that para­tran­sit is not a sub­sti­tute for tra­di­tion­al pub­lic tran­sit.*

In sum, the dis­abled are less like­ly to own cars than oth­er Amer­i­cans, more like­ly to use bus­es and trains, and about equal­ly like­ly to walk. So if we want more equi­ty for the dis­abled, we make walk­ing and pub­lic tran­sit eas­i­er.

*This does not mean that para­tran­sit is unnec­es­sary.  The pur­pose of para­tran­sit is to serve peo­ple who can­not use tra­di­tion­al tran­sit- so the minor­i­ty of dis­abled who use para­tran­sit real­ly, real­ly need it. 

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