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66 Another common form of promotion and outreach is word-of-mouth, when you ask someone about a paratransit service. Is the service safe, accessible, reliable, and affordable? Again, good maintenance, driver training, scheduling, and outreach all make a crucial difference. Brochures and notices about your system can be produced and distributed at relatively low cost. They can be made available inside and on the outside of the vehicles, at the system office, at businesses, hospitals, government offices, stores, etc. This information should be made available in alternative formats to assure that persons with disabilities can access them. These formats may include large print, signage with proper contrast (e.g., black on white and black on yellow are highly used), Braille, raised letters (for example, for the vehicle number within a vehicle), and text phones. Accommodations can be made for persons unable to read or write the local language by using symbols, colors, and oral assistance. The paratransit system could choose to purchase a range of small gifts, such as pens, paper tablets, magnets, etc., that have the system name, logo, phone number, website, and Facebook address to provide a way for certified passengers to contact the system and book a ride. Small systems and owner-operated vehicles can have the owner’s name and contact information. Information can also be sent out as advertisements and public service announcements via radio stations and TV, although this can be costly. A vehicle with a driver (or manager) can be on display at fairs, market days or shopping centers, or at community events to increase awareness and answer questions. Vehicles need to be equipped with comment cards, mailing addresses and phone numbers so that passengers can provide their positive and negative comments on the service and make suggestions for improvements. 8.2 Social media and data-sharing Real-time social media and access to real-time service information are changing, improving, growing more available and becoming less expensive. Many potential readers of this <strong>Guide</strong> will have access to some form of these technologies via computers, tablets, mobile phones and other devices. Depending on your situation, it often will become increasingly costeffective to tap into these new technologies. Paratransit agencies often choose to have websites. There are different approaches to make websites accessible according to prevailing access standards. (Go to http://www.w3.org/WAI/ for information on the WC3 web accessibility standard.) Depending on circumstances, you may be able to reach out to current and potential transit users in the form of information and advertisements on websites and via emails, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and applications (“apps”) that become available at little or no cost. Paratransit systems that charge different fares between zones, or limit services to within designated zones, can provide maps for their clientele. Paratransit systems that provide some version of "service routes" along fixed corridors can post routes, maps, schedules, fares, and information on road closures, traffic tie-ups and schedule delays, vehicle breakdowns, projected arrival times of the next several vehicles and associated alerts to be ready for the vehicles, locations of the nearby stops and how to walk or roll to them and time to do so, locations of wheelchair-friendly stops and vehicles, and locations of nearby vehicles and seat availability. This can encourage dynamic and real-time requests for service and pinpointed dispatching by the transit system. It can dramatically improve the convenience and productivity of the service.
Vehicles can be equipped with GPS and mobile data terminals in order to keep dispatch informed of vehicle locations and to transmit information about pickups, drop-offs, etc. between driver and dispatch. Increasingly, tablets and phones come equipped with GPS which can be tracked by dispatch and information can be easily transmitted back and forth at a cost which tends to decrease as time goes by. In some situations, smart phones and apps can also be used to (1) locate vehicles in your neighborhood and speak directly with the driver to arrange a trip, or (2) to pay for the service remotely or at the vehicle, with money value downloaded onto phones (for later fare payments) at special grocery and transit outlets. Riders should be encouraged to send in positive and negative feedback on the service via their electronic media. Hong Kong provides an example of the use of advanced promotion and outreach of both fixed-route and paratransit services. Readers are encouraged to visit the websites found by typing "disability access to public transit in Hong Kong" into a search engine. 8.3 Advisory committees An advisory committee can be an important element of any paratransit system, and becomes critically important for larger systems with a greater need for feedback from their ridership. Advisory committees could include or be entirely composed of persons with disabilities and seniors who are customers of your system. Attention should be paid to including persons with different disabilities (for example, wheelchair users, blind persons, clients with hidden disabilities such as arthritis or a heart condition). The advisory committee could also include representatives from different city departments and agencies. If the paratransit system also serves tourists and visitors, someone from a tourist-related agency could be a member. Advisors can provide helpful comments on system accessibility, safety, and reliability. The committee could also include representatives of local bus and rail public transportation agencies and promote their accessibility in an integrated manner so that those systems may more inexpensively serve an increasing number of disabled passengers. Advisory committees should be operated in a transparent manner, especially for paratransit systems run by cities or other government entities. Everyone's opinion should be valued, which implies that standards should be enforced so that no one person dominates the committee to the exclusion of the viewpoints of others. Advisors should take their responsibilities seriously and should ideally have written expectations as to their service. The paratransit agency should consider assisting by providing transportation to the advisory committee meetings. Advisors should be "trained to competency" by becoming familiar with the challenges and difficulties facing paratransit providers. Advisory committees not only provide helpful feedback about the quality of service and any emerging problems, but can assist a paratransit agency in forming service criteria which will be more acceptable to the public and will deflect criticism that decisions are being taken without community input. In San Francisco, USA, the paratransit advisory committee, with more than thirty years of service, has become an outstanding source of experience for reviewing new initiatives and commenting on problems and challenges facing the system, while providing an additional source of promotion of the system that helps assure that funding provided by the city will remain at required levels. This section was prepared by Richard Schultze, except Section 8.3 prepared by Tom Rickert 67
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Published by Access Exchange Intern
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2 such vehicles are used to serve p
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4 Key findings (1) Around the world
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6 poor management ability, difficul
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8 operating Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)
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10 subvert the role of the market a
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12 considerably lower than that of
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14 Driver behavior is also a concer
Page 18 and 19: 16 Once the overall eligibility pol
Page 20 and 21: 18 Africa. While there was no speci
Page 22 and 23: 20 caseload in terms of the transpo
Page 24 and 25: 22 Section 3: SOURCES OF FUNDING Pu
Page 26 and 27: 24 clients or students are provided
Page 28 and 29: 26 Section 4: PLANNING & PERFORMANC
Page 30 and 31: 28 What trip purposes will be permi
Page 32 and 33: 30 Proxy counts to measure outcomes
Page 34 and 35: 32 Operating Costs The operating bu
Page 36 and 37: 34 • Ongoing fuel costs that vary
Page 38 and 39: 36 Early types of powered wheelchai
Page 40 and 41: 38 Larger systems need to have clea
Page 42 and 43: 40 5.5 Facilities A very small para
Page 44 and 45: 42 families with at least three chi
Page 46 and 47: 44 Case study: A SMALL MOSCOW START
Page 48 and 49: 46 Also, the educational level and
Page 50 and 51: 48 Your agency should have written
Page 52 and 53: 50 This is a short version of a mod
Page 54 and 55: 52 Training to assist passengers us
Page 56 and 57: 54 Procedures for using occupant re
Page 58 and 59: 56 the occasion, or a blind-fold to
Page 60 and 61: 58 Other information: • Is this a
Page 62 and 63: 60 account of the needs of riders,
Page 64 and 65: 62 or disruptions due to weather, t
Page 66 and 67: 64 Eligibility criteria and registr
Page 70 and 71: 68 Section 9: BUDGETING AND FINANCE
Page 72 and 73: 70 vehicle or other damage. Owners
Page 74 and 75: 72 • Negotiate for lower cost mai
Page 76 and 77: 74 (5) The public sector should con
Page 78 and 79: 76 Case study: "PERSATUAN MOBILITI"
Page 80 and 81: 78 The vans can accommodate three w
Page 82 and 83: 80 everyone, make it easier to iden
Page 84 and 85: 82 The case study below illustrates
Page 86 and 87: 84 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Resources o
Page 88 and 89: 86 CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS GUIDE We th
Page 90: 88 We thank Unwin Safety Systems fo
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