| Transportation handicapped people constitute a small, but highly diverse, segment of the population. Their functional limitations and abilities, frequency of travel, desire for additional travel, economic status, and access to private automobiles vary considerably. Therefore, it is important to stratify the transportation handicapped population into distinct market segments so that transportation solutions can be linked to the needs of each.;The handicapped people generally travel less than half as much as other people. However, much of this difference in trip-making is because most handicapped persons are unemployed. Although the transportation handicapped do not travel very often, their demand for additional travel appears to be surprisingly low. Even if a barrier-free transportation service could satisfy the apparent latent demand, the resulting average daily trip rate would still be much lower than that of the general public.;Three general approaches to improving the mobility of handicapped people have been studied: modification of existing fixed-route bus systems, specialized transportation services, and subsidies to individual transportation handicapped people to enable them to use available taxi services at lower fares.;The average additional cost of operating a fixed-route bus system that has been made accessible to the handicapped is approximately ;To date, none of the foregoing approaches has had a significant impact on the mobility of large numbers of handicapped people. The three programs have not been heavily used by most handicapped people. In most cases, a few people have accounted for a large majority of the trips made under each of these alternatives. Many of the handicapped have access to private automobiles and prefer not to use those services. Another factor that must also be considered is the inaccessibility of the handicapped in the rest of the environment.;Transportation handicapped people face numerous other barriers to mobility besides a lack of accessible transportation. These barriers are architectural, physical, economic, psychological, and institutional. Until these obstacles are removed, there is a limit to what any barrier-free transportation system can do to increase the mobility of transportation handicapped people. |
