Category Archives: Accessibility

I am an advocate and it is fine.

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I am not afraid to disclose that I volunteer on an accessibility advisory committee for the TTC while remaining employed as a public servant and transportation planner with a higher level government. That potentially makes me a “special interest” advocate in a public sector position. Here, I will make a big confession. There may indeed have been instances when my volunteer experience in accessible transit influenced how I carried out my 9-5 work but I think it’s completely fine, nor am I violating any ethical code of conduct.

Being an advocate in a professional setting is obviously a double-edged sword. On one side, it enables me to be a subject matter expert on the topics close to my heart. On the other side, I can easily be criticized for being heavily biased and reluctant to acknowledge the perspectives of those with different values and experiences from mine.

Then there’s the perception that I may have a conflict of interest, given the potential for me to leverage my 9-5 job to support the interests of a publicly funded agency that I happen to volunteer with, but that doesn’t necessarily put me in a troubled situation. The Ontario Professional Planners Institute (OPPI) explicitly states in their code of conduct that “members have a “primary responsibility to define and serve the interests of the public”. Advocating for accessibility is my way of fulfilling my responsibility to serve the public interest. As well, the TTC is not my client or an investment holding. So there is absolutely no pecuniary interest from my end.

Advocacy is driven by personal values and passion. Personal values and passion are what separate the movers and shakers (ie. Leslie Knope) from your stereotypical beaurocrat counting down the days to retirement (ie. Garry Gergich). My passions are what led me to my career as a planner. Without them, I may as well have leveraged my math degree to pursue a career that pays more money. Lawyer and planning theorist Paul Davidoff argued that values are part of every planning process and that the planner isn’t solely a value-neutral technician. Davidoff also stated that advocate planners use their experience and knowledge within the field of planning to represent the ideas and needs of their comunities.

A forward-thinking profession shaped by constantly evolving technological and demographic trends needs to attract passionate people who are unhappy with the status-quo and push for progressive change. Many of these people are advocates in one way or another whether it’s for social justice, active transportation, source-water protection, a zero-carbon transportation system, etc. Without passionate individuals, planning authorities risk being trapped in a closed-minded culture resistant to change.

There is no shame in idetifying yourself as an advocate.

Image from: Advocacy Focus

Telework: It’s about the destination, not the journey.

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The COVID-19 pandemic serves as an opportunity for employers to test their off-site work policies and evaluate their impact on productivity and work performance. For governments and planning authorities, it offers a window to observe the impact on travel demand and potential return on investment of government-led interventions and messaging to encourage working from home. “Telework”, “telecommuting”, “distributed work” or “remote work” refers to working from a location other than the central office at least part of the time (Source: teleworktoolkit.com). Telework helps address several common goals and priorities simultaneously including accessibility, emissions reduction, and cost savings for employers, employees and goverment.

Accessibility
The lack of mobility options is a barrier preventing access to employment for those in remote areas and people with disabilities. A home working arrangement enables workers to provide their own work accommodations in a familiar place with close access to caregivers and personal service workers, provided that they have access to the required equipment and technologies. Further, it allows those who are ill or immunocompromised to work in self-isolation.

Emissions Reduction
Any additional home energy consumption associated with home offices can be offset by the reduced volume of passenger vehicles idling in gridlock traffic.

Cost Savings for Employers, Employees and Governments
Employers can reduce employee turnover and absenteeism as well as office space needs while employees reduce their own spending on transportation, which costs Canadian households a total of $202.3 billion annually – second only to shelter in terms of major spending categories. Lister, et al. estimate that the annual return on investment of a federal telework progrm, if implemented effectively, would be $14 billion annually.

Governments often play a leading role in supporting telework by offering employers with toolkits and templates of corporate policies, agreement terms, employee/manager agreement applications, assessments/checklists, and various other resources. See this toolkit from the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Or see the State of Oregon’s Teleworking tookit.

Planning authorities can request residential property developers to include study rooms or “wifi rooms” in floorplans, such as the one in my building, shown below. These rooms can provide teleworkers a refuge from roommates, children, pets, and other distractions at home.

Above:Wifi room at 88 Spadina Road apartment building

Additionally, government organizations have led by example by enabling their own employees to work off-site. See City of Ottawa or City of Calgary.

Translink, the transit authority in the Vancouver region, identified telework as an important component of their trip reduction strategy during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Contrarily, our very own regional transit authority in the GTHA, Metrolinx, doesn’t even have the mandate to support employers on telework due to Bill 57 enacted 2018, which reduced their madate to strictly just transit.

What exactly is “paratransit”?

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In my experience working in the transportation industry, I have heard my professional colleagues use the term “paratransit” in reference to specialized door-to-door transit services for people with disabilities, such as Wheel-Trans. At one time, I ignorantly assumed that the prefix “para” is short for “parallel”, meaning that it operates parallel to conventional transit services, much like how the Paralympics occur parallel to the “regular” Olympics. Alf Savage, the general manager of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) between 1981 and 1987, used this erroneous way of thinking to defend the lack of accessibility at Toronto’s subway stations during his time. He said, “Can you imagine a wheelchair in the rush hour at Bloor and Yonge? That’s why we have a parallel system for disabled with WheelTrans” (Bateman, 2013).To people like Savage, there is a separate transit service for disabled people, while so-called “able-bodied” people ride the conventional system. In contrast, others have used “paratransit” as an umbrella term that includes a wider range of flexible transit services that do not operate on fixed routes or schedules. Robert Cervero (1997) defines paratransit as “a type of service which relies on small vehicles which are frequently privately owned and operated, and which may not work on a schedule.” So basically, UberPool, Bridj,and RideCo can all be considered paratransit. Likewise,Wheel-Trans is simply another first/last mile solution connecting commuters from their door to a higher order transit station. It does not give us a cop-out for failing to make conventional transit universally accessible. Fortunalely, the TTC has since come a long way. It now offers the Family of services, which encourages Wheel-Trans riders to make multi-modal trips by transferring to conventional transit services at accessible bus stops or subway stations. This more recent approach treats paratransit as a means of accessing conventional transit rather than segregating it from the rest of the system. It just puts greater importance on making our conventional transit system fully accessible pursuant to the AODA, as planned. The world has moved on from people like Alf Savage. Maybe it’s time we rethink our language too.

Note: I am cognizant that there will always be those who require door-to-door transit services due to the nature of their disabilities that prevent them from using conventional transit services without putting their safety at risk. As such, I am not in any way implying that all users of specialized door to door services should be forced to use conventional transit or Family of Services.

References
Bateman (2013). A brief history of the Scarborough RT. BlogTO. Retrieved August 2019 from https://www.blogto.com/city/2013/07/a_brief_history_of_the_scarborough_rt/

Cervero, Robort (1997). Paratransit in America: Redefining Mass Transportation. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Press.