the lifts on buses, do anything else that you might have to do with commuter rail or other rail, is less expensive than running a paratransit system?

Mr. WEISMAN. Yes, it is.

Mr. LIPINSKI. It is.

Mr. WEISMAN. I think USDOT agrees with that, and so does APTA. The May 1986 fact-finding record for the 504 Regulations that DOT prepared proved that paratransit is far more expensive than accessible transit. The only issue that was debatable is the effectiveness of one system versus the other.

Mr. LIPINSKI. How did that come out?

Mr. WEISMAN. At that time, USDOT said that paratransit is more effective. I should tell you, though, the story of this record. In 1979, when USDOT required essentially what the ADA requires, lifts on buses, accessible retrofitted key rail stations and commuter rail stations and paratransit programs, the Congressional Budget Office did a report saying that paratransit is cheaper than mass transit and made, essentially, a fool of Secretary Goldschmidt and his staff and embarrassed them, terribly.

Secretary Goldschmidt issued a rebuttal, criticizing the fellow who wrote that report and said that it was politically-oriented and transit-operator-controlled and that transit operators were trying to just avoid meeting any mandate. When President Reagan was elected, APTA had won a lawsuit which Secretary Goldschmidt and President Carter would have appealed, but then President Reagan was elected and decided to live with it and they had to write new 504 Regulations, they hired the same consultant USDOT did who used to work for CBO, who they criticized only a year before, to write the new Committee report, the new record, to do the fact finding because they liked the result of it.

So this is like any other beast. It is really political.

Mr. LIPINSKI. I thought maybe you were going to tell me that he has come up with new results, the second time around.

Mr. WEISMAN. He did. He came up, now, with paratransit is more expensive but more effective. So paratransit still was more desirable. But the real goal here was to get this away from publictransit operators.

Richard Ravitch, who just ran unsuccessfully for mayor in New York City and ran on MTA for years, is essentially a liberal Democrat. He believed-he doesn't, now, by the way. I wish he were here today to say that-he believed that the transportation problems of disabled people were Social Services problems, they were not public transportation problems. And he fought us tooth and nail because of that. I think that right-thinking transit folks felt that way, too. Mr. LIPINSKI. I don't mean to interrupt you, but it has been a long day and I just have one more question, here. If the disabled community prefers mass transit and mass transit is less expensive than paratransit, do you think it is fair, also, to impose upon transportation agencies in this country the dual transit systems, then? Mr. WEISMAN. The answer is yes, but you want to know why, too. Mr. LIPINSKI. Obviously.

Mr. WEISMAN. Because you are clearly doing more than you are doing for the able-bodied, if you do that. But it is because transit doesn't exist in a vacuum. That's why. Because it is meeting a

need, and the need is to get people, in the case of disabled people— with able-bodied people, to get them to work and to socialize and recreation, but more importantly, in the case of disabled people, to get them off of benefits.

The status quo, doing nothing, is not free to government. Remember 80 percent of the capital and 50 percent of the operating money is federal dollars. So we are talking about government money.

Mr. LIPINSKI. It is all government money, to the best of my knowledge, except the money that comes in at the fare box.

Mr. WEISMAN. Right; and maintaining the status quo or doing nothing, even, doing less than we are doing, is not free. It is very expensive, because disabled people don't die from things they used to die from. They live. And we support them at barely subsistence levels.

Mr. LIPINSKI. We all live a lot longer today.

Mr. WEISMAN. But we support them, and we can't afford to do it. So you have to get people self-sufficient and out there and independent and in the community.

Mr. LIPINSKI. I appreciate very much your answer. Once again, it was a very articulate answer. I would like to discuss this with you further at a later date.

Mr. WEISMAN. I would be happy to.

Mr. LIPINSKI. It is a very late hour, and I have to go someplace and there is a group waiting to testify who I have been waiting to have testify all day, so we had better get to it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MINETA. Thank you very much. Mr. Weisman and Mr. Hudson, thank you very much.

Mr. WEISMAN. Thank you.

[Mr. Weisman's, Mr. Hudson's, and Mr. Mayer's prepared statements follow:]

the lifts on buses, do anything else that you might have to do with commuter rail or other rail, is less expensive than running a paratransit system?

Mr. WEISMAN. Yes, it is.

Mr. LIPINSKI. It is.

Mr. WEISMAN. I think USDOT agrees with that, and so does APTA. The May 1986 fact-finding record for the 504 Regulations that DOT prepared proved that paratransit is far more expensive than accessible transit. The only issue that was debatable is the effectiveness of one system versus the other.

Mr. LIPINSKI. How did that come out?

Mr. WEISMAN. At that time, USDOT said that paratransit is more effective. I should tell you, though, the story of this record. In 1979, when USDOT required essentially what the ADA requires, lifts on buses, accessible retrofitted key rail stations and commuter rail stations and paratransit programs, the Congressional Budget Office did a report saying that paratransit is cheaper than mass transit and made, essentially, a fool of Secretary Goldschmidt and his staff and embarrassed them, terribly.

Secretary Goldschmidt issued a rebuttal, criticizing the fellow who wrote that report and said that it was politically-oriented and transit-operator-controlled and that transit operators were trying to just avoid meeting any mandate. When President Reagan was elected, APTA had won a lawsuit which Secretary Goldschmidt and President Carter would have appealed, but then President Reagan was elected and decided to live with it and they had to write new 504 Regulations, they hired the same consultant USDOT did who used to work for CBO, who they criticized only a year before, to write the new Committee report, the new record, to do the fact finding because they liked the result of it.

So this is like any other beast. It is really political.

Mr. LIPINSKI. I thought maybe you were going to tell me that he has come up with new results, the second time around.

Mr. WEISMAN. He did. He came up, now, with paratransit is more expensive but more effective. So paratransit still was more desirable. But the real goal here was to get this away from publictransit operators.

Richard Ravitch, who just ran unsuccessfully for mayor in New York City and ran on MTA for years, is essentially a liberal Democrat. He believed-he doesn't, now, by the way. I wish he were here today to say that he believed that the transportation problems of disabled people were Social Services problems, they were not public transportation problems. And he fought us tooth and nail because of that. I think that right-thinking transit folks felt that way, too. Mr. LIPINSKI. I don't mean to interrupt you, but it has been a long day and I just have one more question, here. If the disabled community prefers mass transit and mass transit is less expensive than paratransit, do you think it is fair, also, to impose upon transportation agencies in this country the dual transit systems, then? Mr. WEISMAN. The answer is yes, but you want to know why, too. Mr. LIPINSKI. Obviously.

Mr. WEISMAN. Because you are clearly doing more than you are doing for the able-bodied, if you do that. But it is because transit doesn't exist in a vacuum. That's why. Because it is meeting a

need, and the need is to get people, in the case of disabled people— with able-bodied people, to get them to work and to socialize and recreation, but more importantly, in the case of disabled people, to get them off of benefits.

The status quo, doing nothing, is not free to government. Remember 80 percent of the capital and 50 percent of the operating money is federal dollars. So we are talking about government money.

Mr. LIPINSKI. It is all government money, to the best of my knowledge, except the money that comes in at the fare box.

Mr. WEISMAN. Right; and maintaining the status quo or doing nothing, even, doing less than we are doing, is not free. It is very expensive, because disabled people don't die from things they used to die from. They live. And we support them at barely subsistence levels.

Mr. LIPINSKI. We all live a lot longer today.

Mr. WEISMAN. But we support them, and we can't afford to do it. So you have to get people self-sufficient and out there and independent and in the community.

Mr. LIPINSKI. I appreciate very much your answer. Once again, it was a very articulate answer. I would like to discuss this with you further at a later date.

Mr. WEISMAN. I would be happy to.

Mr. LIPINSKI. It is a very late hour, and I have to go someplace and there is a group waiting to testify who I have been waiting to have testify all day, so we had better get to it.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. MINETA. Thank you very much. Mr. Weisman and Mr. Hudson, thank you very much.

Mr. WEISMAN. Thank you.

[Mr. Weisman's, Mr. Hudson's, and Mr. Mayer's prepared statements follow:]