derstanding what the long-range effects of providing this transportation really means. An interesting story that could well be applied to this situation would surround my assistant. My assistant and his wife were talking about getting a dog. The conversation surrounding the situation became, "Yeah, but we don't really need a dog. Yeah, but it would be nice to have a dog." The conversation continued on until they actually got a dog. They named the dog Yeahbut. Yeah, but perhaps should be applied to this situation. Why don't we just get on with providing the necessary transportation. In the long run we will save dollars.

I disagree with one of the statements Mr. Currey made on eliminating luggage department space. Actually, the pump and motor is about the size of a shoe box mounted below the floor on this particular lift. I believe that ends my testimony.

Thank you very much.

Mr. MINETA. Thank you very much, Mr. Herman.

Mr. Tim Cook.

Mr. Cook. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As Director of the National Disability Action Center, I have had the opportunity to see first hand the importance of accessible transportation to people with disabilities. Indeed, it was because of the enactment by the Congress of the Education of the Handicapped Act 14 years ago in 1975 that it has become more important today.

As a result of that Act, you now have adults with disabilities who have been educated, who want jobs, who want training, who want to be able to use recreation and social services in the community, but they cannot do so because of the lack of accessible public transportation. Transportation is probably the most important and fundamental aspect of the ADA because without accessible transportation, all the other things the Act provides us just don't matter-because we cannot get there.

It is a civil rights issue for us as much as it was for Rosa Parks 30 years ago in Montgomery, Alabama. She had to go to the back of the bus. We can't even get on the bus. The witnesses from the transit system this morning are still trying to argue over the issue of whether or not we can get on that bus. That should not be the debate anymore.

The transit systems' testimony asks these Members of Congress to continue to give them the ability to exclude us from buses. That should not be the debate anymore. The only debate at this point should be how to get us on the bus.

Contrary to the transit system witnesses this morning, the Americans with Disabilities Act as enacted by the Senate constitutes a number of very severe compromises on the part of disabled Americans in this country.

One, we are not asking any transit system to retrofit a single bus. Greyhound has 40,000 buses now that are totally inaccessible. ADA allows those to continue to be inaccessible. The thrust of the Act is future oriented; if you purchase a new bus, it must be an accessible bus. Although public transit systems must comply with this requirement 30 days after the enactment of the Act, private transit operators are given six to seven years to comply with the Act.

Under the Senate provision, that is actually extendable by the President to seven or eight years, a very long period of time. Remember, disabled people have been excluded completely from buses, ever since they started manufacturing buses in this country several decades ago.

But we are still willing to wait patiently all this time until we are able to use the transit system. Look what we are talking about here: if the ADA passes this session of Congress, we are talking about waiting until 1998 before that first accessible bus must be purchased.

Then we are talking an additional 12 years after that before an accessible bus system is phased in. So we are talking about the year 2010 before we have a fully accessible system in this country, 2010. That is a severe compromise. The transit system witnesses say, we want to be able to exclude you not only until the year 2010, but forever. That is the compromise we are not going to make.

The other compromise that is embodied in the ADA is that it does not dictate any particular methodology for making the systems accessible to people with disabilities. The Act does not say buses must have lifts. All the Act says is that they must be readily accessible. There is enormous flexibility in the way that transit systems can go about making their systems accessible under the Act. Yes, they can purchase lifts. They can redesign the bus making a low-floored bus. We are talking eight years down the road. That is plenty of time if that is what the transit system chooses to do to redesign the bus and have a ramped bus. You could have a boarding lift come out to the bus if that is the way they want to do it. The point is that there is enormous flexibility in the way the Americans with Disabilities Act allows you to comply with the requirement.

Now, in terms of the mandate in the Act, and the study coming before the mandate, it is very clear-if I am an inventor and I have a choice of inventing a better lift for a bus or inventing a better widget, what am I going to choose to do with my time over the next eight years? If I see the ADA will make it a higher likelihood that my product will be purchased, I will put my resources into building a better lift. That is part of the economic system in this country. If we don't put the mandate in, there is absolutely no incentive for any inventor or any industry in this country to work on building a better lift. If we mandate it now and have it take effect eight years from now, there is an incentive. This is not unusual.

This is something Congress does all the time. For instance in the area of auto safety Congress required greater auto safety including things like disc brakes and air bags to be required in the future before the technology existed for those things.

The purpose was to give incentive to develop the technology. Pollution controls is another example. There are many statutes for certain pollutants like benzyne and carbon dioxide that are required to be decreased by industry before the technology exists for doing so.

These are what in the field are termed "technology-forcing" statutes. That is what the ADA does, it gives incentives and puts the requirement in there in order to give the industries the incentive

to develop the technology. That is the whole point, to force the technology through the means of legislation.

In terms of the costs, what we are talking about is a question of values here. The bus companies are willing to spend enormous amounts for extras such as air conditioning and luxury items for buses, but they are unwilling to spend that amount on lifts. What Congress will do by passing the ADA is to say to the transit systems, we are making a judgment that access is a civil right and that it is as important as our extras such as air conditioning, which are just as if not more expensive.

It is interesting what the industry has done with the costs. The first time we met with them several months ago they insisted that the cheapest way of providing access was by a $35,000 lift. In fact, in testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on the Handicapped in June, 1989, we had testimony by Mr. Charles Webb, a representative of the American Bus Association, which also testified before this body this morning. I am reading from page 172 of the hearings before the Senate Subcommittee on the Handicapped on the ADĂ: "Mr. Webb, if you could get a lift for under $8,000 with no loss of space for baggage and only one seat, do you think that would be reasonable?" Mr. Webb answered, "Absolutely."

So now that we have the Hubmatic lift with no loss of cargo space, no seat loss and with minimal operating costs, according to the American Bus Association's own testimony, in June, it is feasible. Now they are trying to backtrack furiously and now say they apparently didn't mean to say what they said in June. What they are doing before this Congress is attempting what many business people commonly do, paint the worst case scenario.

The costs in terms of accessibility are minimal compared to the enormous economic benefits not only to the people with disabilities in the country but also the economy as a whole. We are talking about a 70 percent unemployment rate among persons with disabilities, people who largely rely on public assistance, people who want to work, want to be able to transport themselves and become taxpaying citizens. The cost to people with disabilities of "special services" is enormous not only because of the loss of income but also because it completely eliminates the ability to travel spontaneously.

This 48-hour notice business Mr. Currey talked about this morning is the minimum amount of notice that will be required if his proposals were adopted. Remember, once you make that reservation 48 hours ahead of time, it is impossible to change it. It totally eliminates the ability to travel spontaneously. How many Members of this Congress would be able to get anything done if they had to make their travel arrangements 48 hours in advance without a possibility of a change? What do you do if you have an emergency? What do you do if someone calls and says, let's take a bus trip this afternoon?

If you are in a wheelchair, you cannot do it. Buses as they are constructed accommodate an enormously large spectrum of peoples' gaits and girths and they provide an enormous amount of luxury such as air conditioners. Disabled people are saying, we do not want something "special." All we want is a service that is "as special" as that provided to everyone else in this country.

We need to keep our eyes on the prize here, that, is, equality, civil rights. In the area of transportation, that is a fundamental right, and that is what the Americans With Disabilities Act gives

us.

Thank you very much.

Mr. MINETA. Thank you, very much.

Mr. John Winske, Assistant Director of Massachusetts Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities.

Mr. WINSKE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is John Winske. I live in Boston, Massachusetts. I guess today I am the Massachusetts point man to redirect some of the things Mr. Picknelly said this morning about the Massachusetts experience with lift equipped buses.

I am the executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities and also the chairperson of the Access Advisory Committee to the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, one of the largest transit authorities in the United States.

In 1986, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts purchased six wheelchair accessible intercity coaches. This was the first time any state or any company in the United States purchased accessible intercity coaches. Early that same summer I met with a young lady named Joy who lived in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, a small city some 50 miles north of Boston. Joy, like myself, uses an electric wheelchair for mobility.

One of the companies which leased an accessible intercity bus was Englander Coach Lines, based in western Massachusetts. The bus route for Englander passed through Fitchburg and ended in Boston. For the better part of 15 months, Joy and I used that bus to visit each other on weekends and holidays. On a typical weekend, Joy would catch the bus at 8:00 p.m. on Friday after finishing her classes at Worcester State College. When Joy arrived in Boston at 9:30 p.m., she would wheel herself for the one mile trip to my apartment. She was not able to use the paratransit program in Boston because of residency requirements.

From June 1986 until October 1987, Joy and I took 50 round trips on the bus. In addition to visiting Joy, I used the buses for business purposes around the state. In October of 1987, Joy moved to Boston where she had gotten a job. After October, we both used the bus approximately once a month to visit Joy's family and to make our wedding arrangements. We were married in June of 1988.

It should be pointed out that if Joy and I had had to rely on paratransit (van) service to and from Fitchburg, it would have cost us at least $150 round trip. The cost of the bus was $9.00 round trip. At that time she was living on social security and I was making $7.00 an hour. It would have been highly unlikely that we could have carried on a relationship or romance at that price.

The fact that I am here today telling you this story actually speaks volumes about the need for an Americans with Disabilities Act. Two young people using buses to carry on their romance shouldn't be noteworthy, but for the disabled in America our story is quite unique.

Despite my story, you will hear today from opponents of this bill that the buses are not utilized very often. I would like to tell you some of the reasons for this apparent low ridership statistic.

Before 1988, there was no cooperative agreement between the 15 transit authorities in Massachusetts. That is to say that even if a person was eligible to use the paratransit (van) service in their own community, they could not use that service to travel to another part of the state because each individual transit authority had its own residency requirements. This is why Joy had to wheel the one mile to my apartment in the middle of winter or summer at 9:30 at night.

Because of the length of some of the routes, buses only made one round trip per day. A disabled person had to have accessible lodging for the night.

The new accessible bus program was not well publicized. This was deliberate since the lifts were of an experimental nature. There was concern that consumers might be stranded.

The lifts for the first year had several mechanical problems, and were out of service frequently. They were eventually rewired by one of the bus companies in Massachusetts and those ideas were incorporated into the new lift design.

Lastly, it must be mentioned that one of the reasons for the ridership figures not being high is the timidity of persons with disabilities. Persons with disabilities have been conditioned that they cannot ride buses. Society has told them no. It will take time for them to believe the word, yes. What is known is that as transportation systems become more accessible, the ridership by disabled consumers increases dramatically.

The MBTA has seen the demand for accessible buses increase six-fold since 1986. You have also seen the ridership on the Metro system here in Washington, D.C. increase. I understand that when that system was being built, there was concern that the disabled would not ride it. You know that this is not true. You have seen that, as confidence in the system grows, the number of disabled people using the system grows. We know as systems become more accessible and as the confidence of disabled people grows in the system, they ride the system. It can also be noted that Massachusetts this year purchased 22 more intercity coaches.

These were fully designed coaches. I want to point out that despite what Mr. Picknelly said this morning, with these new coaches there was no loss of seats. If no person with a disability is on the bus, then the seats snap right back into place. If there is a person in a wheelchair then you lose two seats. All the driver has to do is snap the seats into a forward position and there is room for the wheelchair.

Yes, the cost of the lift in Massachusetts is $35,000. Let me point out that this is because the buses are pulled off the assembly line to have the special lift put in place. If Congress sends the word that accessibility is a must, there is going to be a rush to build accessible buses. It will become a regular feature of buses and the cost will drop dramatically because it will be part of the tooling of the factory and will not be something that needs to be pulled off the line to be put in place.