The Direction of National Developments in Specialized Transportation in the Untied States

This paper was developed for a series of international conferences on mobility and transport for the elderly and handicapped. In addressing the mobility needs of the transportation disadvantaged, the United States (U.S.) gives emphasis to two groups in particular, elderly and the handicapped persons, more or less on a co-equal basis. This dual trend arose because of the language in the so-called Biaggi amendment in 1971, Section 16(a) of the Urban Mass Transportation Act which declared it to be national policy that elderly and handicapped have the same right as others to have access to mass transit facilities utilizing federal funds. An integration of elderly and handicapped persons in specialized transportation polices in the U.S. is not widely replicated; for example, in Canada and European Countries physically handicapped people are the primary focus of national policy, and age, per se, is deemed not relevant, though the elderly, by no means are ignored.