Suggested Citation:
Venkataram, Prashanth S., Justin Flynn, Md Musfiqur Rahman Bhuiya, Jesus M. Barajas, Susan L. Handy (2023)

Availability and Usability of Transportation for People With Disabilities Depending on What the User Is Expected to Do

We comprehensively review typical problems that people with disabilities face when using local transportation modes. We show how specific problems with each mode can affect many different disability subgroups at once and can affect or be affected by problems with other modes. Academic literature about transportation for adults with disabilities skews toward walking, driving one’s own motor vehicle, using a ridehailing or taxi service, using a carsharing service as a driver, and using public transit, so this review focuses primarily but not exclusively on those modes. We frame these problems using the terms that we introduced in a previous work. Provider-view availability refers to where & when a transportation mode is present or legal to use. Immediate usability refers to features of a mode’s vehicles or infrastructure, where and when such vehicles and infrastructure are present, that help or hurt a user. User-view availability captures how serious problems with immediate usability for some users can prevent them from using those modes at all, make some aspects of provider-view availability moot for them. Cumulative usability refers to problems with a mode that arise over frequent use, longer trips, or more complicated trips, that may discourage a user from using that mode. We explain how modes that have similar requirements, present or absent, for the user to drive or to make a first-/last-mile connection exhibit consequently similar problems with provider-view availability, immediate usability, user-view availability, and cumulative usability.