49 CFR Parts 37 and 38 -- Transportation for Individuals With Disabilities at Intercity, Commuter, and High Speed Passenger Railroad Station Platforms; Miscellaneous Amendments, Preamble

Comments

Disability community commenters unanimously supported the Department's proposal. In the absence of such a provision, they said, passengers with disabilities would be denied integrated service, instead often being confined to a single car, unlike other passengers. Accessibility approaches that limited access to a single car (sometimes referred to in comments as the “cattle car” approach) were unacceptable and discriminatory, they said. Level-entry boarding, disability community commenters said, was by far the most satisfactory solution, since it provided direct access to rail cars, while minimizing the chance of problems caused by malfunctioning or poorly-maintained equipment or ill-trained or unavailable employees. Among other means of access, these commenters generally preferred car-borne lifts to station-based lifts, because the latter were viewed as less reliable, safe, and secure.

Railroad industry commenters were just as unanimous in opposing the NPRM proposal. They cited a variety of reasons for their opposition. Many commenters assumed that the proposal would require level-entry boarding to be instituted at all or almost all stations, necessitating retrofit at many existing stations. Based on this assumption, many commenters predicted enormous costs for what they believed the proposed requirement to be. These commenters opposed any retrofit requirements, a few suggesting a that level-entry boarding requirement apply only to wholly new systems. In addition, some of these commenters believed that the NPRM would require lifts or bridge plates to be deployed for every car at every station, further driving up personnel costs and delaying trains.

Many commenters, especially freight railroads, asserted that platforms providing level-entry boarding would interfere with the passage of freight cars through passenger stations, since the width of freight cars (especially so-called “overdimensional” cars, like those used to transport airframe components for aircraft manufacturers or large military items) could create conflicts with higher platforms. On Department of Defense “STRACNET” lines, commenters said, it was particularly important to avoid the conflicts between freight cars and platforms that the commenters believed would occur under the NPRM proposal. According to railroad commenters, some means that could avoid such conflicts, like gauntlet or bypass tracks or moveable platform edges, were impractical and/or too expensive. Many of these commenters preferred a platform no more than 8 inches above top of rail (ATR), a height that would never permit level-entry boarding.

A number of commenters pointed out that more than one passenger railroad may use a given platform (e.g., Amtrak and a commuter railroad) and that, in many cases, the floor heights of the various railroads' equipment are different. It would not be possible, commenters said, to have level-entry boarding on the same platform if the door height of one type of car using the platform is 25 inches ATR and the door height of a second type of car using the platform is 17 inches ATR. Commenters pointed to wide variations in car door heights as precluding any uniform approach to level-entry boarding. Moreover, some commenters said, the height of a platform providing level-entry boarding could exacerbate problems for passengers resulting from wide horizontal gaps between the platform edge and the car.

Railroad industry commenters had a number of comments about accessibility equipment. Some said bridge plates with a slope of one inch in height for every eight inches in length were too steep to permit independent access for wheelchair access and would require staff assistance. For this reason and because of the need to cover wide horizontal gaps, there would need to be personnel available in a high level platform situation just as there would be if car-borne or station-based lifts were used, with attendant costs and potential dwell time delays. A number of railroads said that car-borne lifts were in use and had many advantages, such as being able to adjust and provide access to platforms of various heights. Some railroads rely on station-based lifts and stated that they are planning to order more of them. A number of railroad commenters supported the use of mini-high platforms, generally preferring to have only one such platform.

Some commenters preferred to make only one stop at such a platform while others were willing to make multiple stops, as needed. A number of commenters expressed concern about the provision of the NPRM saying that mini-high platforms and other platform obstructions should be at least six feet back from the platform edge, to avoid channeling passengers into a narrow, unsafe space in front of the obstructions. These commenters said that a longer setback would make bridge plates impracticably long; that it was not always practicable to fit a six-foot setback into a platform, given stairways, columns, or other obstructions; or that a six-foot setback could create other safety problems.

Finally, some railroad commenters opposed the idea that passengers with disabilities should be able to access every car of a train that was available to other passengers. Some of these commenters said they were not aware of significant demand from riders to provide accessible boarding at each train car. Others cited concerns that they would need costly additions to staff, or that integrated service would lead to additional dwell time, interference with schedules, safety problems in evacuating passengers with disabilities if they were scattered among all the cars of the train, or difficulty in figuring out at which stations passengers with disabilities wanted to leave the train. Other commenters made legal arguments, such as that the NPRM stretched the concept of “integrated setting” too far or that Congress, by allowing railroads to meet rail car accessibility standards by having one accessible car per train, intended to limit railroads' obligation to serve disabled passengers to that one car.