Transit, housing initiatives highlight accessibility concerns for disabled community

Advocates for disabled people in Austin want to ensure upcoming major changes to the local transportation network and housing market don’t exclude those with physical, visual or hearing impairments.

A discussion on Tuesday at the Austin office of the advocacy group ADAPT of Texas brought together leaders attached to the Project Connect mass transit plan and efforts to increase housing density near transit corridors, with a special eye on creating homes that are easily accessible and affordable for people with disabilities. Following the recent passage of the HOME 2 slate of land use changes to greatly reduce minimum lot sizes, talk turned to what the city can do to meet expected increases in demand for accessible homes in the future.

Jamie May, housing and community development officer for the Housing Department, said the city’s incentive packages for developers are aimed at achieving 5 percent accessibility, with greater levels achieved through the city or other entities buying land near transit stops and building housing according to community needs.

“Where we have made investments I think it’s like 5 percent of the units have to be accessible. We know that that’s not enough, which is why we’re looking at our guidelines right now, working with a contractor to review all of our rules and regulations and make sure that we’re providing the benefit to the community that we should be,” he said, referencing industry forecasts of a need for up to 18 percent of housing stock to be accessible.

May also addressed the advancements made to develop equitable transit-oriented developments, which are intended to combine affordability, accessibility and the full spectrum of business and lifestyle offerings nearby.

“Let’s say you have your living space here and then you have your transit right next door, but if there’s no grocery store for 3 and a half miles and there’s not one on transit, it doesn’t do you any good,” he said. “We need to build complete communities that serve the population well. We need to make sure that people can get to that transit and can live near it and that the built environment serves us.”

Looking at the light-rail system planned for Project Connect, the panel discussed the need to make sure all transit stations and the areas around them are designed to be as inclusive as possible, with wayfinding mechanisms that can serve riders with impairments to their vision or hearing.

Martin Kareithi, director of systemwide accessibility for Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said new technology such as auditory beacons and QR codes can mesh with tactile features such as patterns in the concrete leading up to boarding platforms to help reduce points of friction for people with disabilities.

“Elements will be the required widths, the required heights, the required slopes. That’s all going to be there. The real challenge with the accessibility is that footprint around the station, that piece that gets you to and from the actual system,” he said. “The opportunity, the challenge, the ideation, the innovation – that’s going to be the work that happens around the station at whatever radius that you have that we consider that we’ll be able to work in and design in and construct and build.”

Peter Mullan, executive vice president of urban architecture and design for Austin Transit Partnership, said the decision to build the light-rail system at street level allows for maximum accessibility by eliminating the need for elevators to reach elevated or underground access points.

“Some of this realization came from conversations with people in this room – that there is some real benefit to being on the street. The idea of light-rail and transit being more accessible to the public and reducing the time and energy you have to spend to actually get to your vehicle and having the transit system really is being integrated into our urban fabric,” he said, noting he and his team will need to address design considerations such as the low profile of people in wheelchairs crossing against traffic at intersections.

Michael Phillips, training supervisor for Austin Lighthouse, said agencies involved in accommodating people with disabilities need to conduct immersion trainings at all levels to let staff and decision-makers experience living without vision or having to use a wheelchair.

“One thing that I do have a little bit of a concern about is the human interaction. When we hire new people in our orientation, we give what we call your merging training. They come in, they’re blind or totally sighted – it doesn’t matter. We have a blindfold on them and we teach them how to use a cane and walk around so they feel and get the idea of the perspective of a blind person,” he said. “I truly believe in some immersion training, some sensitivity training for these operators and people that I think it would make it more accessible, give us more independence, give us more confidence.”

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