TRANSPORTATION OF SPECIAL USER GROUPS

While Transportation Alternatives has considerable expertise in the transit, paratransit, school bus, special education, motorcoach, taxi, non-emergency medical transportation and airport and hotel shuttle fields, the Company has specialized largely in the transportation of individuals with special needs, infants and children:

Examples of project and policy work in areas related to these individuals are described in various sections of this website. In particular, TA's expert witness assistance to attorneys and insurance companies (see Expert Witness Consulting and Testimony, and many TA President Ned Einstein's articles published in national trade magazines (see Articles by Ned Einstein, and the majority of the Company's policy work (see Policy Formulation and Analysis) service to these special user groups.

Particularly with respect to demand-responsive and other non-traditional transportation service forms and structures, TA's design efforts have proven repeatedly that it costs less to provide efficient and safe services that limit liability exposure than it does to provide unreliable, sloppy and dangerous services. (See Principles of System Design and Principles of Paratransit Design.) Equally as interesting, efforts to optimize service for a special user group (e.g., accommodating schoolchildren on public transit services) have demonstrated that the characteristics integrated into these services on their behalf have provided equal or greater benefits to the ridership at large. (See Transportation System Design/Transfer Pulse Feeder/Circulator System.) Similarly, TA's efforts to mediate a dispute between the disabled residents of Los Angeles County and its countywide transit authority (LACMTA) were aimed at improving transit service in general -- not undermining it at the expense of improved service to just wheelchair users (see Expert Witness Consulting and Testimony).

See also: