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

Counting Trip Denials and Missed Trips

NPRM

In the preamble to the NPRM, the Department discussed how complementary paratransit systems should count trip denials and missed trips. This is an important issue because the rate of trip denials can affect determinations by the Department and, in some cases, the courts about whether a paratransit operator is complying with its obligations under the Department's paratransit service criteria. Too many denials can result in a finding that the operator either has a capacity constraint or is otherwise falling short of its obligation to provide timely service to eligible passengers.

In many cases, there is no difficulty in determining how to count trip denials. If a passenger asks for a one-way trip from Point A to Point B and is told that a ride is unavailable, or the vehicle does not show up, then one trip has been denied or missed. (A denied trip is one the provider declines to schedule for an eligible rider. A missed trip is one that the provider scheduled for which the vehicle never arrives, or arrives outside of the pickup window, and the passenger does not take the trip.) In the case of requests for round trips or multi-leg trips, the situation is less straightforward. Suppose a passenger asks for a round trip from Point A to Point B and back to Point A, or asks for a trip from Point A to Point B to Point C, with a return to Point A. The first leg of the trip is denied or missed, with the result that the passenger never is able to get to Point B. Clearly, at least one trip—from Point A to Point B—has been denied or missed. In addition, the opportunity to make the subsequent trips in the itinerary has also been lost. In this case, the Department suggested in the NPRM, the trips from Point B back to Point A, or from Point B to Point C and then back to Point A, should also be tallied as denied trips, because the action of the paratransit operator in denying or missing the first trip cost the passenger the chance to take those trips.

Comments

Generally, transit authority commenters believed that only the trip that was actually denied or missed—in the example, the first trip from Point A to Point B—should be counted as a denied or missed trip. Doing otherwise, they said, would unfairly exaggerate the performance problems of the operator. In addition, these commenters said, there might be cases in which operators, while unable to provide transportation from Point A to Point B, would be able to provide transportation from Point B to Point A later in the day, if the passenger had found an alternative way of getting to Point B. Moreover, some commenters said, there could be some situations in which it could be difficult to determine whether the denial of one trip led to the inability to take a subsequent trip, making the counting process problematic.

Disability community commenters, on the other hand, supported treating as denials foregone opportunities for subsequent trips resulting from denied or missed trips. Under the ADA, these commenters believe, eligible passengers are required to receive trips they request. If a denial of one trip makes a second requested trip impossible, then two opportunities to travel required by the regulation have been lost, and should be counted as such. Both trips should be counted as denied, lest paratransit operators evade accountability for their failure to provide required service.

DOT Response

The Department believes that when a denied or missed trip makes a subsequent requested trip impossible, two opportunities to travel have been lost from the point of view of the passenger. In the ontext of a statute and regulation intended to protect the opportunities of passengers with disabilities to use transportation systems in a nondiscriminatory way, that is the point of view that most matters. To count denials otherwise would understate the performance deficit of the operator. The paratransit operator obviously would not need to count as a denial a trip that was actually made (e.g., trip from Point A to Point B missed, passenger gets to Point B in a taxi, and paratransit operator carries him from Point B back to Point A). While there may be situations in which an operator would have to exercise judgment concerning whether the denial of one trip resulted in a lost opportunity for a subsequent trip, that is not sufficient reason, in the Department's view, to permit paratransit operators to generally avoid counting as denials lost opportunities for travel resulting from their own inability to provide previous trips. We also caution paratransit operators against declining to take reservations for round trips or “will call” trips in order to reduce missed or denied trip statistics.

It is also important for there to be a standardized way of counting missed trips and denials that the Department, passengers, and transit providers can rely upon. These statistics should be calculated on the same basis nationwide, in order to permit better program evaluation and comparisons across transit providers. The Department is issuing guidance on counting missed/denied trips, and the Federal Transit Administration can work further with transit providers on appropriate statistical measures.