The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that President Joe Biden just signed into law allocates $1.75 billion toward making public transportation more accessible for disabled folks.
As of 2019, nearly 20 percent of all transit stations in the United States were not ADA accessible.
I’m amazed that such a meaningful provision remained in this bill, considering how much other good stuff got stripped out along the way. For instance, the original infrastructure investment proposal that Biden had put forth in the spring, the American Jobs Plan, called for investing $400 billion in the “infrastructure of care.” There are a whole lot of disabled folks, like me, who need assistance from others in our homes to do everyday things like getting out of bed and getting dressed. Public funds like Medicaid pay for that assistance.
Because of a lack of funding, however, hundreds of thousands of disabled Americans have been waiting—sometimes for years—to receive these services. The infrastructure of care has been neglected as much as bridges and the electrical grid. The $400 billion was an attempt to do something about that backlog, but it was compromised out of the bill that Biden signed.
But The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act did include a modified version of legislation that was introduced in the House and Senate in May called the All Stations Accessibility Program (ASAP) Act. ASAP sought to establish a $10 billion fund for local public transit entities over ten years that could be used only to make stations accessible in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, the primary sponsor and champion behind the legislation,is a double-leg amputee and a wheelchair user.
Yes, it’s true that the ADA was signed into law thirty-one years ago. But according to the Federal Transit Administration, as of 2019, nearly 20 percent of all transit stations in the United States were not ADA accessible. That’s because the ADA only requires a percentage of stations to be accessible. And transit entities have repeatedly shown that unless they are required to spend money making stations accessible, they won’t.
The three train stations in the Boston suburb of Newton, Massachusetts, for example, are all still inaccessible. Here in Chicago, there are large gaps along some rapid transit lines where there are several consecutive stations that are not accessible. I can’t use the station that’s one block from my home because it still has no elevator. And the Chicago Transit Authority has spent millions renovating some stations that remain inaccessible.
But now, $1.75 billion will be available for the asking transit entities to make accessible stations that have fallen through the cracks of the ADA. They’ll have to try a lot harder to come up with excuses for inaction.