How Cities Still Fail People With Disabilities

Despite federal and state laws dictating that public spaces must be accessible to people with disabilities and mobility challenges, many cities in the United States and Canada remain largely inaccessible, writes Ron Buliung in a piece for The Conversation.

According to Buliung, “Access to safe and reliable public transit is one such problem. For example, many of the issues plaguing paratransit (ideally on-demand, door-to-door service for disabled persons) today — unacceptably long wait times, having to plan and schedule days in advance, service costs, convoluted trip regulations, failing to pick people up — are often as old as the services themselves.”

Public transit stations, meanwhile, often lack functional elevators and other amenities. When they do have them, they often face what Buliung calls the ‘last millimetre problem:’ “a wide gap or vertical misalignment between platforms and transit vehicles making it impossible or hazardous for some disabled persons, like my daughter, to get on or off the system.”

Bike infrastructure, too, can exclude the needs of people with disabilities by failing to provide signals for blind pedestrians, for example.

For Buliung, part of the solution is for cities to more carefully listen to the needs of people with disabilities and include them in decision-making in transportation and infrastructure projects from the beginning. “Real accountability, rather than performative empty consultation, should be the order of the day.”