Prepared Remarks of Nuria I. Fernandez

Project Action/Easter Seals
Nuria I. Fernandez
Acting Administrator
Federal Transit Administration
September 19, 2000

Prepared Remarks

Thank you very much for having me here today. I want to recognize, in this room, many of the movers and shakers of the disability rights movement:

• The President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities
• American Disabled for Attendant Programs
• The National Council on Disability
• Paralyzed Veterans of America
• The National Council on Independent Living
• Howard University
• Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund
• The Transportation Research Board
• And Taide Buenfil-Garza, who is visiting us from Mexico.

Thank you all for being here, and thanks again to ADAPT for meeting with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority in February. What a long way we’ve come since our joint meeting in February—I am so pleased to see walls coming down in that area.

I also want to personally thank my staff—Michael Winter and Fred Williams—and also Bryna Helfer of Project Action for helping to put together this important event.

Their tireless efforts have furthered FTA’s mission of providing for the general welfare by helping to ensure mobility and access for all to life’s day-to-day activities.

I can’t begin to tell you how much I am honored to be the Acting Administrator of the Federal Transit Administration during the 40^th Anniversary of our agency, the 10^th Anniversary of ADA, and during this exciting time of new thinking about the benefits of transportation—in particular the benefits of accessible transportation.

I truly believe that we have crossed a new threshold towards an understanding of how valuable accessible transportation is to the nation. Already, we know that transit, in general, provides many benefits. Here are some examples:

• Transit returned $23 billion annually to the national economy in affordable mobility;
• $9.4 billion per year in annual reduced congestion delays for rush-hour passengers and motorists was realized;
• $10 billion was saved per year in reduced auto ownership costs for residents of location efficient neighborhoods; and
• Up to $12 billion per year in reduced auto emissions was saved.

I have fully supported FTA’s efforts to measure transportation benefits—it’s our business—and I assure you that I will continue to support the agency on this matter until the end of my term.

I am also very proud of DOT’s efforts to enforce ADA and provide guidance to the law, as we will continue to do, and are committed to do. Currently, 666 Key rail stations are either accessible or under plans for full compliance as a result of stepped-up efforts by FTA to document accessibility of key transit stations. Assessments will continue, as another 172 stations at the 33 different transit properties with rail transit are visited through the year 2001. Also, 77% of our public buses are now accessible. But we must be vigilant. We must be sure that a station or bus labeled "accessible" is indeed accessible.

Now, I’m going to be brief. I don’t want to take away from the short time you have left in this conference—time you need to make important decisions—and I don’t want to lose the poignancy of the moment.

I am not going to go over more of the accomplishments of DOT over the last eight years. You know the record, you know the many achievements we’ve worked hard for, and you know we still have much to do. I am not going to give you a review on measuring the benefits of accessible transportation; you’ve been tuned in to that discussion for the last day and a half.

I am going to tell you—during this 10^th Anniversary of ADA, and during this new era of partnerships—that now is the time.

Now is the time to discuss whether we should move forward and advance the cause for measuring the benefits of accessible transportation. It is a valid question that you, as the leaders in the accessibility movement, must not let pass unanswered while you are here in the same room.

Let Project Action know if benefit measurement is important enough to be a focus of funding for the next months and years. Let them know whether or not you want academia to join forces on this issue to come up with new solutions for tomorrow’s transportation landscape. Even more important, you need to let them know whether you should take the lead on this matter—or allow the answer to come from other quarters.

If the answer is yes, you do want to take the lead, then consider the following:

• What should Project Action do next?
• What are you going to say to your respective organizations?
• What are you going to say to the Transportation Research Board?
• What are you going to say to agencies like the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics?
• What are you going to say to organizations like ADAPT?
• What are you going to say to other leaders in the accessibility movement?
• How are you going to coordinate all of their efforts?
• Do we need to follow this ground-breaking conference with a follow-up conference?
• Should Project Action commission a white paper to follow-up on FTA’s paper that was distributed at this conference? If so, what level of funding should Project Action set aside in its FY 2001 Budget?