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Buttigieg is pouring billions into accessibility. He says it will benefit all travelers.

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3 months ago

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Buttigieg is pouring billions into accessibility. He says it will benefit all travelers.

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  • The Department of Transportation has invested billions of dollars in accessibility improvements over the last few years.
  • DOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg said there’s still a lot of work to be done to make equal access a reality.
  • The DOT is working to improve accessibility through funding more projects as well as increasing penalties when transportation providers flout the rules.

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Transporation Secretary Pete Buttigieg poured billions into accessibility efforts. He wants you to know it’s yielding results. 

The Department of Transportation has invested billions of dollars over the last few years in improvements meant to make the nation’s transportation system more accessible to people with disabilities, including $5 billion in airport improvements and $1 billion in rail transit accessibility upgrades. In a conversation with USA TODAY, Buttigieg emphasized how central those improvements have been to his department’s mission. However, he understands there’s still a lot of difficult work to be done to make equal access a reality. 

As the Paralympics prepare to kick off in Paris, the DOT released a video highlighting some of the recent infrastructure improvements the agency invested in. Here’s what the DOT is working on and what Buttigieg is planning:

Is transportation in the US accessible? 

Even the DOT’s own video admits there’s a lot of work to be done. 

Within the first minute, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and former Paralympic basketball player Matt Scott, shared how they’ve both had their wheelchairs damaged “countless” times by airlines.  

According to the DOT’s statistics, airlines typically mishandle 1% to 1.5% of the mobility devices they carry, equating to 11,527 reports of damage in 2023. 

To that end, the DOT in February proposed a new rule to penalize airlines more harshly when they damage wheelchairs. 

“Every wheelchair user I know who has traveled by air has some kind of horror story, some kind of incident or set of incidents they experienced, and I’m convinced that a lot of those could have been prevented through the kind of accountability that we’re trying to deliver with this rule,” Buttigieg told USA TODAY. “This is about practices and procedures and policies. It’s about accountability.” 

Even beyond the aviation sector, Buttigieg said, accessibility remains an issue for getting around. Much of the country’s rail infrastructure, for example, was built before the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted and is not required to be retrofitted. 

“That’s a huge problem for people who count on them,” Buttigieg said. “It’s not that the transit agencies don’t want to improve them, but they lack the funding.” 

In the DOT’s video, Duckworth said she doesn’t use the L system in Chicago because so many of its stations are inaccessible. 

How is the DOT improving accessibility in transportation? 

Buttigieg said the DOT is working to improve accessibility by funding more projects as well as increasing penalties when transportation providers flout the rules. 

“The big part of what it’s doing is defining a new standard for safe and dignified assistance because a lot of this is things like how personnel are trained and what happens when there is an incident,” he added. 

Under the proposed rule for aviation, airlines would also take a bigger financial hit for mistreating their disabled passengers’ devices. The DOT is reviewing public comments about the proposed rule and plans to issue a final directive soon. 

“Part of what this rule would do is it would make clear that it’s automatically a violation of the Air Carrier Access Act if a device is mishandled,” Buttigieg said. The ACAA is separate from the ADA and governs accessibility in air travel. “With that kind of financial accountability, that’s going to work wonders for the airlines’ training programs because they will have more on the line, on their bottom line, when it comes to employees actually knowing what to do and following through.” 

The DOT is also working to provide more communities with funding and resources to make their road and pedestrian infrastructure more accessible. 

Traveling abroad with a wheelchair?: Here’s what to do if it gets damaged on the way.

What needs to happen next? 

Buttigieg acknowledged that there’s still more work to be done, but he’s optimistic that the current projects are a model for the future of accessibility improvements. Of course, depending on the outcome of the 2024 presidential election in November, it’s possible that priorities around transportation accessibility will shift in the new year. 

“It’s one thing to get the funding lined up. It’s another to make sure the construction is successful … now we’re really moving into the phase where more and more of it is about the construction and the completion of the projects, not just the announcement of the dollars,” he said. “As we start thinking about the next steps when the current infrastructure law expires in 2026, I hope we’ll have demonstrated why accessibility needs to be at the center of these conversations going into the next infrastructure package.” 

Zach Wichter is a travel reporter for USA TODAY based in New York. You can reach him at zwichter@usatoday.com.

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