Transit agencies navigate serving growing disabled ridership without cutting into funds for regular bus and rail
By Jon Hilkevitch, Chicago Tribune
Nov 14, 2012
The aging population is helping to spur exponential growth in paratransit use across the Chicago area, and the strong demand for the door-to-door service by people with disabilities is taking millions of dollars away from other bus and train operations, transit officials said.
Paratransit is a civil right under the law. Yet if nothing is done to make the service financially sustainable in the long run, the expanding slice of the public-funding pie that is going to paratransit threatens to cannibalize standard bus and rail service, CTA officials said.
Such a development would hurt daily commuters as well as less-severely disabled riders who are being encouraged to switch from paratransit to traditional fixed-route buses and trains whenever possible to help cut costs to themselves and the system, the officials said.
The paratransit fare is $3 each way, 75 cents higher than the $2.25 base fare to ride a regular CTA bus. But the actual cost of providing that $3 paratransit ride is estimated at $36.07 this year, according to Pace, which manages paratransit in the six-county region.
"Paratransit is a critical service and a lifeline for people in the disabled community. But the math speaks for itself,'' CTA President Forrest Claypool said.
From 2008 through this year, paratransit expenses have reduced the CTA's share of funding by $239 million and Metra's share by $194 million, according to an analysis of Regional Transportation Authority financial statements by the CTA, which is struggling to cobble together a 2013 budget that avoids fare hikes or service cuts.
"I don't claim to have the answers, but if paratransit growth rates continue, as they are projected to do, (regular) service will be affected'' on the CTA, Metra and Pace, Claypool said.
Paratransit expenses for 2012 are projected to total $137.5 million, according to Pace. That figure is up from $128.1 million in 2011 and up from $69 million in 2005, according to Pace and the CTA. The paratransit financial outlook for 2013 and 2014 projects 5 percent increases each year, according to the RTA.
Travel training
Pace officials say the paratransit funding situation is not as severe a drain as the CTA portrays it to be.
As part of reforms that in 2008 provided for a quarter-cent increase in the sales tax collected for public transit in the Chicago region, the General Assembly created two pots of money. The move effectively built a firewall around some sales tax revenue that pays for regular bus and rail service, and created a new pool of money that pays for paratransit as well as other bus and rail service, Pace officials said. In addition, the state provides a partial match to the second pool of sales tax revenue.
"Traditional bus and rail service funding is safeguarded from expense growth on paratransit,'' Pace spokesman Patrick Wilmot said.
But CTA officials point out that paratransit funding is taken off the top of the 2008 sales tax increase and that paratransit expenses are projected to exceed the amount of money generated by 2028, based on trends.
All transit officials agree that the cost of paratransit in the Chicago region has almost doubled over the past seven years, partly because of the growing elderly population.
This year, 5.4 percent of the $2.54 billion operating budget for the RTA system — made up of the CTA, Metra and Pace — is being spent on paratransit, which under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act must be fully paid for and cannot be reduced or cut to lower expenses. Paratransit services are offered in the same geographic areas as standard fixed-route service and during the same hours of operation.
More than 49,000 people are currently registered in the paratransit program in the Chicago area, according to the RTA. The cost averages more than $2,800 a year for each person. The number of paratransit trips provided has grown from 2.4 million in 2007 to 3.4 million last year, according to Pace.
"On regular transit, you would look like a hero if you generated 40 percent ridership growth,'' said Rocky Donahue, Pace's deputy executive director.
Donahue and Pace Executive Director T.J. Ross said Pace has introduced numerous efficiencies to lower the cost of delivering paratransit services, including increasing ride-sharing and aggressively marketing the use of standard fixed-route service for disabled people who can use that option instead of the costly paratransit.
It's a difficult sell, because many paratransit clients, including those who are physically and cognitively able to use standard buses and trains some of the time, still consider paratransit their safety net. Mobility has improved remarkably in recent years for unprecedented numbers of disabled and elderly people who rely on the special public transit service as their connection to society. That's the good news, in the wake of budget cuts in assorted government social services that also reduced or eliminated associated transportation options for clients with physical or behavioral limitations.
Renita Freeman, who has degenerative arthritis and other conditions, is a longtime paratransit customer who gets around mostly in her powered wheelchair that she steers onto the ramp of a paratransit vehicle. But the 60-year-old South Side resident recently started riding buses and trains for the first time since her younger days, thanks to one-on-one travel training provided by a RTA trainer.
"The 'L' and Metra were new for me, and I was terrified to ride the wheelchair on the platform and onto the train,'' said Freeman, who said she has difficulty walking and breathing. "But once (her trainer) told me what to do, it was a piece of cake. Now I can go visit relatives and friends who live way out in the suburbs and I feel safe.''
Frances Thompson, 71, of Evanston, said she uses paratransit and standard bus and train service, depending on the circumstances.
"I call the paratransit when the weather is bad, or when I go to see a friend who lives far away in Chicago,'' Thompson said last week after attending a travel training session that was presented by an RTA trainer to the Foster Senior Group at the Fleetwood Jourdain Community Center in Evanston. Travel training is designed to familiarize senior citizens and some disabled people with how to use traditional bus and train service.
Budget frustrations
The CTA operated paratransit for more than 20 years in Chicago and got out of the business six years ago when the agency handed off the job to Pace, which previously operated paratransit in the suburbs since 1992. The move saved the CTA about $54 million.
But the financial math of paratransit never added up, and it clearly isn't computing today as the CTA and Metra both may be forced to raise their regular fares in 2013 to pay for service improvements and avoid budget deficits, transit officials said.
RTA Chairman John Gates Jr. sparked controversy recently when he pronounced paratransit "a limousine service.'' Gates later apologized for the remark, saying he let his frustrations get the better of him in regard to the struggle to balance the increasing need for paratransit with the increasing financial losses associated with it.
The trend is unsustainable, transit experts say, unless new funding sources are developed or the existing program is modified.
Some transit agencies in the U.S. have tightened the paratransit application screening rules. But in the Chicago area, the RTA accepts about 98 percent of applicants to the paratransit program, records show. RTA officials say the acceptance rate is so high because potential participants are pre-screened before a decision is made to send out an application form.
With 2012 almost over, the CTA finds itself in a serious budget predicament. In this year's budget, agency management assumed, incorrectly, that it would achieve labor union work-rule concessions totaling $80 million to help erase a $277 million budget deficit. But the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents CTA bus drivers, train operators and other workers, has rejected any significant money-saving changes in contract negotiations that have dragged on for months, according to sources on both sides.
In 2013 the CTA must find at least $160 million in savings to help balance its budget, officials have said. Claypool is expected to present the 2013 CTA budget Thursday, and riders are bracing for a possible fare increase.
On the surface, it would appear that disabled and elderly riders who count on paratransit to travel to activities ranging from medical appointments to recreational events are protected from having the federally mandated service withdrawn.
Yet many people still could be left without the transportation. The price-sensitive population that paratransit serves is highly vulnerable to the impact of fare increases, which, if imposed, would likely significantly reduce use of paratransit because fewer people would be able to afford it.
Federal regulations covering ADA paratransit establish a ceiling for paratransit fares that is double the base fixed-route bus fare. It translates to a maximum $4.50 paratransit fare in Chicago (the CTA base fare is $2.25) and $3.50 in the suburbs (the Pace base fare is $1.75).
Other approaches
The Chicago region is hardly alone in feeling the paratransit budget pinch, but some other transit systems are taking creative approaches to deal with it.
In the nation's capital, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority saved more than $25 million in fiscal 2011 by offering free rides on standard fixed-route bus and rail service to paratransit-eligible riders, officials said. More than 559,000 trips were taken using the free benefit last year, the transit authority reported.
In Cincinnati, all potential paratransit clients seeking service from the Southwestern Ohio Regional Transit Authority are required to attend assessments before certification, and they must be recertified every two years to stay in the program.
In the Chicago area, the RTA typically requires paratransit riders to recertify every four years, and they aren't required to do so at in-person interviews or assessments. A mail-in recertification form is sent to riders whose eligibility is deemed unlikely to change, officials said. They justify the process as being "much less burdensome on riders and much less expensive for the RTA.''
Copyright © 2012, Chicago Tribune
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