back. We've also got some other materials related to bicycling like our bicycle level of stress map. We've also got the Texas Department of Transportation has got a brochure on how to research and find and track different projects that are being done by Tax Dot. So I'm going to follow up on what she was talking about with the master bike share plan. There's opportunity for people with all types of disabilities to get involved and give feedback to make that system in our community more accessible. So I've recently found that two of the bicycle stations that are located I think at the zoo and maybe the museum reach of the river I think actually have an accessible unit at those two bicycle locations. Do y'all know anything about that? Can y'all come talk about that? And so if we want to see more of those in our community participating in surveys like the bike share master plan are the way that we're going to make things like that happen. So my name is Andrew McAllister and I'm with the Belated Foundation and our mission is the inclusion of physically challenged kids with activities that typical cool kids get to do in their peers. And so what we've done with partnership with B-Cycle is we have put two adaptive bikes at B-Cycle locations as was said earlier at the zoo B-Cycle location and then at Roosevelt Park. And so there's a chair adapted bike there called the duet at both those locations where you can have a physically challenged person ride in the front and then an able-bodied person can pedal in the back and then it disconnects into being sort of a wheelchair so you can wheel it around and take the person to a picnic or something like that. And so right now we're doing a six month pilot program where you can sign up for a membership for a nominal fee and you can try that out and ride around in that. So we're so grateful for B-Cycle and the opportunity to come out and share about that this evening. So thank you. So issues with transportation don't just impact us we're in getting around town and in getting to work and getting to school but that they also impact the ways that we have recreation. Do y'all want to talk about San Antonio bike tours? Come on up and then we'll get started with our panel discussion. That's one of those challenges. We kind of wear two hats here. We are in the tourism industry of course. We do guided tours of San Antonio but what makes us a little bit different is we don't use traditional bicycles. We use tricycles which we have a couple of them over here and because tricycles are not terribly common with a lot of bike shops and a lot of bike shops typically don't have people that really focus on adaptive uses of trikes. We also are a dealer for the TerraTrike line of trikes and we work with folks who have various issues that prevent them from riding a traditional upright bike. In the last couple of years we have worked with a group that supports people with multiple sclerosis and has supplied 22 trikes to people with MS letting them get out and ride and be active. Last year at the MS-150 one of our one of our recipients the trike got out of his wheelchair, transferred to his trike, rode two and a half miles on the MS-150. He had been an active bike rider prior to his diagnosis. If you get an opportunity stop by and visit us. We have one of our trikes set up with several of the different adaptive devices to grab bars that make it easier for people to get in and out of the trike, headrests, adaptive pedals that help keep the feet on the pedals. A number of different ways that make cycling accessible and of course a nice thing about a trike is patients people don't have to balance and that makes it quite nice. We even have a blind couple who the wife can have some visual acuity. Her husband is totally blind. He rides on the back, she rides on the front. They do their errand running. They have a couple of kids.  They do a little recreational riding as well. We do, like I said, we're in the tourism side. We also do guided tours of San Antonio. If you have family coming in for the holidays and you want to get them out of the house we'll be happy to take them and show them around San Antonio and give you a little bit of a break as well. Thank you all so much. All right so we're going to get started with our panel discussion. First of all I am Melanie Coffin with Disability SA and we are a local nonprofit organization that works to connect individuals with disabilities with the resources in the community and make sure they have opportunity to engage fully in our local community. We are so pleased to be able to offer these conversation 360s in partnership with the brick here at the Blue Star Arts Complex and tonight we are streaming compliments of Nowcast San Antonio and their support for getting the word out about these conversations and about how we can each impact the community and make it a better place to live for everybody in our community.  If you need assistance in reading or writing or any other type of assistance this evening please let us know. We do have volunteers available to to help with that because we want everybody to participate in the conversation. Now on your way in you should have gotten a survey for this evening. You should have received some some index cards as well as a pen. We encourage everybody to write down their comments or their questions so that we can continue the conversation after today. So if it's not addressed in our our public discussion we can continue to address those concerns and issues and questions as we go along. So tonight our facilitator is Sheila Black she's with Gemini Inc and she has graciously volunteered her time so that I can run around in circles in the back while we get this conversation started. She has edited a wonderful book of poetry about people with disabilities and by people with disabilities called, forgive me, Beauty is a Verb and it's a wonderful compilation and then I recommend I've gotten it started and I received a copy and it's it's a wonderful piece. So on that note I'm going to bring her up. She's going to introduce our panelists. We'll introduce our exhibitors one more time afterwards and then we'll break into small group discussions which will be on navigating transportation if you are blind, accessible parking and accessible transit. So I look forward to a wonderful and dynamic discussion with everybody this evening and thank you for coming out and participating. We will be taking comments and questions from the viewers at home so I may pop in and hand an index card off and we'll get those included and that Sheila Black. I'm going to move it way back just like a rock star because I don't know how to move it down. I'm very happy to be here tonight and I think that this is an issue close to my heart. I was born with a disability called XLH, X-linked hypophosphatemia which affects my mobility and so I've always been keenly aware of the vital importance of access and people with disabilities are the most recent population to get civil rights under the U.S. Constitution with the passage of the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 but we're still struggling with the question of access and how to gain full access and transportation is a major nexus for that. Buses, trains, cars, parking, etc. So we're very lucky tonight to have two wonderful panelists. We have Rosa Villarreal who's the Vice President of Transportation for VIA and we have Chase Brearden who's the Director of Advocacy and Community Organizing for the Austin-Based Coalition of Texans with Disabilities and we're really happy to have them and I will let them get started. Good evening. My name is Rosa Villarreal. I'm the Vice President of Transportation for VIA Metropolitan Transit and so what I do at VIA is I oversee the bus system. So we have two sides to our bus system. We have the fixed route side, the buses that are on a fixed schedule and then we also have the pure transit side which is curb-to-curb service for people who cannot navigate on the fixed route system. I also oversee the accessibility services part of VIA and I'm pleased to have a couple of staff members here with me today. I've got David Frost sitting in the back who's the Manager of Accessible Services and I've got another staff member coming Sylvia Castillo who oversees the pure transit operation. She's a manager over pure transit. I'm fairly new to VIA. I've been there a whole seven months but I come from Corpus Christi where I was also overseeing the system there. Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority. So a little smaller than San Antonio but I've been in transit for about eight years now. So I'm really excited to be here with you and to share with you some of the exciting things that VIA is looking at for 2018. As you can imagine we are seeing some growing trends especially on the pure transit side as our nation ages and more and more people are wanting their choices in transportation. We are tasked with providing those options for our community. Historically the cost of pure transit service is high. I can transport someone on a fixed route bus for about four dollars a person versus on the pure transit side it's something around 30 dollars a person. And so you can imagine more people are applying for eligibility on the pure transit side. The people that are eligible are taking more trips. So as an agency we are looking for innovative ways to deliver that service provide great customer service for our riders and at the same time watch that overall budget. So I'll tell you a little bit about some things after we do introductions that VIA is looking at in the coming years and some pilot programs that are being tested throughout the country. And I'm really looking forward to some of those ideas coming to fruition here in San Antonio. So thank you again for having me. Hello my name is Chase Baird and I'm the director of advocacy for the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities. We're a statewide policy advocacy organization. We've been around since 1978. I've been there for about 10 years. A lot of the work we do has been policy driven looking at transportation, civil rights, housing, education, all the things that make life worth living. I mean you've got to have all of these in your life. So our goal is working with legislators. It's working with state agencies trying to come up with the ideas, the technology, and to ensure that they're following some of the basic rights of what we should be working on. A lot of times legislators will go to create a policy about transportation but not include the disability community. We try and find stakeholders to get involved. We try and get people to talk to their legislators because they're the ones making a lot of these decisions and if they don't hear from the community then most of those decisions are being made by others. We try and get more people to serve on committees to ensure that voice is consistently there and to work towards creating the most independent and accessible community across the state. With that we try and really work a lot on making sure it's the same across the state because I know a lot of times when you go to access something, when you leave Austin and you get to San Antonio, if things are different, if you don't know how to access, you don't know the groups to call, that can become a barrier in itself. So finding consistent transportation issues or access to, you know, hotels, making education. So we've worked towards creating some unity and really look forward to talking tonight. We're going to kind of let you know what we know about pilot program that the transportation network companies will be moving forward with now that the new rules are out a little bit about one project that I've been excited that we've gotten to work on a little bit is high-speed rail and how they're looking at creating it completely accessible from the ground up and it's not something that's, you know, a second thought which that's been a hard part about transportation is it's been around longer than the ADA so most of the things were retrofitted. This is brand new. It'd be the first in the country and they're doing it to where they're having a lot of participation and building truthfully from the ground up. After that, love to talk about accessible parking. It seems to be the biggest issue I ever hear about and we're working towards trying to get legislators to improve that system and make it more effective and allow people to access all the businesses they can buy it. So what would you like to move forward? You want to talk about some of the barriers and innovations that you see are major problems. Why don't we start with major issues that are faced that create trouble with accessibility and maybe you go in there. So some of the things that we've seen in public transportation, so I think vehicles have come around and so I don't know if you all remember back in the old days fixed route buses were very, they were considered high floor and so there was actually stairs to get on a fixed route bus. It wouldn't kneel. There was no mechanism for adding a ramp to it and if you look at our fixed route buses now we don't purchase any buses that don't have a ramp so that people are able to board with their mobility devices. On the paratransit side all of our vehicles are lift equipped and so we're able to board wheelchair scooters and other mobility devices so we've made huge strides in our vehicles. We've also made lots of improvements although it's difficult with our bus stops and I hear this all the time we have over 7,000 bus stops in our system and we do what we can to make them accessible so that when you alight a bus there's a concrete pad and you're able to navigate if you are in a mobility device. We are restricted lots of times with bus stops with limited right of way. A lot of our bus stops sit right in front of somebody's residence or right in front of a business and so we do what we can to make them accessible but we know we still have a long ways to go. The other big issue is that traditional paratransit service is costly. We have looked to partner with TNCs and I'm really interested in in your thoughts about that. We look to partner with TNCs. We look to partner with taxi. They don't always have accessible vehicles which is a problem for us. We do have ambulatory passengers that can navigate in a taxi but if we're going to offer a service we want to be able to offer it to our entire riding population and so it's been an avenue we've tried to pursue but it's slow going. They just have not caught up with the accessibility factors that we need them to be compliant with in order to include them as part of our service so that's one of our big barriers. You know I think something that to build on that you talked about is buying every new bus and making all of them accessible. That's something we've pushed for a lot of groups is accessibility is almost that universal design. It shouldn't be we have a handful of special buses. It should be everything meets every requirement for every person around because you don't have that time to sit and wait around for that next bus to come around that usually then would have a broken lift. That's usually what happens when I fly into an airport and I'm trying to get the rental car bus to pick me up. They had one that had a ramp and then usually that one was the one in maintenance. So seeing that move forward where accessibility is built into everything is key to where we're moving. In Austin our paratransit system it's sometimes a struggle because you have to call ahead so far in advance and you know one to three days a lot of times it makes it difficult when you're living a life you're trying to get where you need to go. Doctors appointments don't always stay the same so making that connection is very difficult and that's where we were excited about eventually moving towards using some of the technology that the TNCs have with more of a flexible dynamic scheduling being able to see when the vehicle is coming on your phone so that you're not having to wait outside in the heat or the cold or the rain and making it a little easier to not miss a ride. Some of their technology I think as we pair with different programs can actually be a huge benefit. You're right one of the biggest problems is they don't have very many accessible vehicles. That is part of what we pushed in the House Bill 100 when they were passing the law on making that statewide licensing is looking at the new rules that just went into effect as of December 1st. All the new licenses that will be issued to any of the TNCs they have to do at least one accessibility pilot program in one of the four largest areas that they're working in and that includes having wheelchair accessible vehicles teaming up with other groups in the area to make sure they're offering some kind of service and how they do that and they're going to have to report that back to the state. Part of the reason that this got passed like that is they wanted to try and incubate some of the new technologies and see what was the best way to be able to find resources to you know kind of apply the same standard across the state but we really didn't know how it was going to work because the way cabs were set up is you had a set number of cabs in the fleet and you were able to say well for that set number you have to have this many accessible vehicles. For TNCs you may have 10,000 drivers out there but you can't compare one you know 10,000 drivers to a thousand cabs because cabs are used 24-7 and like my wife signed up and she never did it she just wanted to sign up to see how it worked. So you we have to find a way to look at time you know when a person hits requests being able to get people served quickly and have that average time and wait period to be as short as possible and build that way and if we can build that and I think that's even with you know buses paratransit systems is having this time set where you make that request and it's on demand we can move forward and I think people's lives will be a lot easier. Tim make a quick note something that he said jarred something in my mind so one of the things that we're trying at VIA2 is obviously technology helps us a lot and technology can be great it can be a great tool what we discovered at VIA is that we were implementing technology that wasn't always accessible to everyone and I think that the hardest part for us in in our area is convincing the rest of the people on the team that just because it works for 80 percent of the population doesn't make it okay to go ahead and implement if it's not accessible for everyone and technology is a strange thing it can be wonderful but you know the issues that we have had with accessibility with technology it they seem to be issues that the tech technology companies have a hard time overcoming something as simple as you know the app can't read a drop-down menu makes it very difficult for someone to use our app so what good is the app if if you can't put in your address and so you know it was something that we were so excited about to roll out new technology and it's going to do great things and then we discovered it wasn't accessible and you know now it's six months down the road so changing the mindsets of other people and getting them to understand that if we're going to implement something it should be accessible to everyone has been a challenge at times yeah I can say just to add it into that working with some of these new technology companies it's getting people in there that have any type of disability and helping them from the beginning so this becomes part of their business plan it doesn't become a secondary contract side of well we got to make it accessible what do we need to do and not understand accessibility at all I think that's where it's so important that as a community when we see these companies coming in that we start participating and talking to them and saying hey as you develop this let's not wait let's build this from the ground up because you're right it's we've had some of the companies that are accessible to a screen reader and then other ones who don't understand it at all so there there are those issues with technology so why don't you talk about some of the new directions you're going with an accessibility and some of the promising strategies you see going forward okay so we had a workshop back in october what we we discovered on our team is that we had all these ideas but we have to work within the regulations of the fta right the federal transit administration and because we're funded federally there's a lot of things that we we can't just go forth and implement we've got to make sure that we follow all of these rules so we held the workshop back in october and we invited transits from all over the country we started with the texas transits and then we invited some other transits and just brainstorm sat down and said what are you doing to help curtail these costs to provide more efficient service and so tell you about a couple of things that we're doing so at via we have a private contractor who provides part of the service so we provide part of that pair transit service and then we have an outside contractor that provides the other the biggest complaint we get is timeliness of trips and so one of the things that we're doing in 2018 is we are going to completely take over dispatching functions for the entire service this allows us to kind of watch trips as we go and so we're not finding out about late trips at the very last minute when they're already late and then we're trying to put a fix on that so we'll be taking over all of the dispatching functions early in 2018 we have been having discussions with yellow cab they've been a great partner the problem in the past was they didn't have as many accessible vehicles when we talk to them about the possibility of using them for what we call our overflow trips they've now committed to bring in more accessible vehicles dedicated to providing pair transit service for via and I think you can speak to almost any of our riders and they'll tell you they would love to take a yellow cab trip versus a shared ride via trans van trip because they can get to their destination sooner so we're working on developing that partnership for yellow cab I think 2018 is going to bring a more fruitful partnership and I think that they're going to do a great job at helping us to provide some of that that overflow accommodation we are putting out a new contract in 2018 for pair transit service we're hoping FTA is is working with several transits around the country to develop a partnership with TNCs eventually the other issue with TNCs besides the accessible fleet is that they have to follow all of the guidelines of FTA and that means background checks drug and alcohol screenings there's a list of of things that they have to comply with and TNCs have not been as quick to come to the table with those things as a partner like yellow cab but it's something that's being talked about all around the country I think that in the next year or so we're going to see some progress with TNCs and we're hoping in the future to have a partnership with them to help provide some of this service as well I say one of the nice things about this is it's creating competition and the one thing about that you know a lot of times the cab companies didn't all come to the table right away and I think they're starting to see that we have to provide better service we need to provide quicker service and at the end of the day if we can have multiple choices within a city that only improves everything for all of us because I know it's even been a struggle in Austin there are times when you call any of the cab companies and they may not have any in the fleet running well they offer accessible fleet but if none are in service at that time there are no accessible services so the more options that are out there I think the better and as we move forward and as these city private contracts kind of build that creates a bigger fleet for all of us and I know that's that's always going to be a benefit I had a question you mentioned federal regulations and you mentioned creating consistent systems at least in Texas this kind of moves toward what can the community do but how how much support do you get from the federal level in some respects how you know is there a system for accessibility coming down from the federal level that supports say what V is doing or in your experience what's happening with transportation in Austin or across Texas I think something that we have to look at is there's almost different levels of groups there's many people who are just looking for an accessible ride and willing and can pay cash at the time to take it kind of your private rides those who you know are writing on one of these systems and able to pay in through that way so each one of those has different regulations and I think it's going to be just building that competitive market on both sides and trying to benefit where we can but I think it's a complex system I will use this opportunity since you asked the question one of our constraints is is budget so we are funded partially by the federal government and partially from sales tax and so via operates off of a half a cent sales tax all of the major transit systems in Texas receive a full cent to operate their public transit system so we often get questions so they get calls all the time about you know I live in this part of town which is outside of our service area why doesn't via trans provide service out here we would love to be able to extend the service beyond where we're at it costs money money that we don't have so when people ask what can we do as community members to you know to support via we say have a conversation talk to your council people talk to your legislators we we run a very efficient system compared to all of the other major transits in Texas and when you consider we are funded at half the level that they are and still provide our demographic area that we serve is is huge compared to some of the other systems and so we do a great job at operating with what we have but we are getting to that point where demand is higher the need for it is greater and we have no funding for accommodating that additional demand I tell Sylvia all of the time I don't envy her position she is one of those people that is operating a system and she needs more resources and doesn't have them and so every day we say go forth and do with what you have and she performs a small miracle every day and makes the service happen we offer I just have the numbers here we're providing over 4,000 trips a day on the paratransit site and that number is growing it's and it's going to continue to grow we need more vehicles we need more manpower we need more resources and we simply don't have the money for it yeah I know in that last conversation we had that half cent has told it up to a lot of money over the years and that's something as a community I strongly agree with you to be able to go forward it's not often when you tell legislators you're willing to pay a little bit more in sales tax or in any tax but if it's going to improve services for us the board for everyone it's worth telling them otherwise all they hear is I want taxes cut so sometimes there's a trade off there to make sure we have the right infrastructure and it costs money so maybe talk a little bit more about what do you want to talk about your light rail project and is via doing anything innovative with transportation that it can increase like light rails or I'm from New York so we had subways which were not terribly they were kind of terrifying when I lived there now they're much better but you were going to talk about the design from the ground up so and and high speed rail yeah so we were approached by Texas Central and we've been talking with them but high speed rail is not light rail it's a totally different system it'd be the first one in the U.S. and it would run from Dallas to College Station to Houston in 90 minutes it runs at about 205 miles an hour the best part about it is that they really are designing the cabins to where you can roll in the platform is completely accessible there's no hump to jump over and no special equipment there's multiple areas for you to sit there are no you know the bathrooms are actually fully ADA compliant being able to move between cars even at 200 miles an hour and then getting to your destination and being able to access other transportation has been their goal pulling together stakeholder groups to talk about design I mean they were really looking at it from the very beginning this is something that's starting to move forward already and you know I think the good part about that is that they are adding transportation and really looking into this for that reason it gives us more options unlike flying where most people flying between Dallas and Houston if you're in a power chair majority of people don't want to make that hop you know it's too too hard on our equipment most of the time you show up and something's broken it's not worth that trip so as we move forward in different options I think that's an important consideration for us in Austin we have one rail line I've never ridden it I don't know many people who do and we don't really have many other options in Austin I know it's something that they've talked about doing more of but trying to find something that everyone can use we just really have to expand it yeah I think that's interesting because one question I had for Rosa and for you as well so paratransits far more expensive what are the benefits of people say with disabilities moving to normal transit and is there any help or training or comfort you know it's I was I visited them England a summer ago and they had it was very and I have trouble standing you know and I had never been somewhere where every time I went into a train everybody or bus everyone leapt up and offered me their seat and I spoke to someone and I said I permitted I was self conscious like do I suddenly look as if I'm about to fall down which I know but they had had a big public awareness campaign about disability and it was called you know don't wait please give up your seat so it was almost like I walked in it was like a musical here here here but it was very helpful to me um and I wondered about that so that's a great idea actually we should break that down and try that you know we we um so we would love for people to ride our fixed route system and we've tried our best to make the fixed route system accessible I talked a little bit about our vehicles they all have they all lean over and a ramp deploys so that people can board with mobility devices we have three most of our buses are equipped with three wheelchair securements including one for an oversized wheelchair or a scooter so we've made you know great progress with that we call out stop announcements at major stops for you know to help people navigate the system we do have a program we call it travel training right now it's a partnership through acog I believe and so if someone comes to us and says I want to be able to navigate the fixed route system there's a bus stop close to my house but I need help I don't know how to how to ride the system then we have a program set up where we can actually have someone train you how to ride the fixed route system and whether that takes a day or a week or whatever it takes we work with you to teach you schedules teach you how to board in a light of bus teach you about our our rider rules we work to make our stops accessible like I said we've got some work to do still we've got 7 000 stops in our system and they're fairly costly to improve and I'm talking about you know 10 to 15 000 dollars each to make them accessible and most of and well I won't say most of the time a lot of the time we do all of this work to make the bus stop accessible but there are no accessible sidewalks leading to wherever they you know for their path of travel and so we part of it is our responsibility part of it is is on the city the city of san Antonio to make those paths of travel accessible but we try to identify those individuals through our eligibility process so when you come in and apply for eligibility for paratransit David's team will take an application they'll ask you some questions and if they can identify an individual who's got maybe some minor obstacles but is capable of riding a fixed route system then they're identified and we recommend that they go through the travel training program obviously fixed route allows you much more flexibility and freedom where you can travel you know just about anywhere our fixed route system goes we are working on um uh putting in a couple of lines where buses will be passing through every 10 minutes so you don't even have to look at a schedule you know a bus is going to come through every 10 minutes so we're trying to um do that on some of our major corridors on our fixed route system but I really like that idea you know and and one of the things on our fixed route is we have priority seating um for people with disabilities unfortunately sometimes people sit in it and we ask them you know will you please give up your seat and sometimes they don't and you know we can't force them and uh so I love that idea of doing an awareness campaign so that that would be a dream come true for us if somebody walked on the bus and everybody jumped up and yeah I would have my seat that would be awesome I think they've had good ads but it was great I mean it was kind of extraordinary and I realized the power of something like that well this has been lovely but now I want to open it up to all of you I've been standing with my back to you kind of awkwardly at this microphone um I I think have people passing forward questions are we walking oh you could come on up to the mic and ask a question I would like Via to encourage bus etiquette the people have to get off the bus first before you get on the bus driver controls the entire bus he a lot of them are very passive there's a lot of noise going on and they let it go misbehavior so the bus driver has to be stronger or better trained etc I end up yelling because his father and mother let the kids run rampant all over the place and that's wrong yes and I believe children should be seen not heard and that and that uh setting I appreciate that comment and and you know I we just had a workshop on Saturday and we had a similar comment so Via employs about a thousand fixed route drivers and Sylvia's got another maybe 200 or so um pair transit drivers and they all go through the same training we teach them they go through sensitivity training customer service training and I would love to say that all 1200 of them are going to do things right every single time unfortunately there are times that we have issues that way what I tell everyone is if you ever have a bad experience on Via or a bad experience with an operator please let us know there are like 10 cameras on every bus and so your complaint is not falling on deaf ears we have a very detailed system a meticulous that meticulously researches every complaint that comes through we will pull video we will talk to the driver we will get down to the bottom of what happened and we will correct the behavior but they we need to know about it if we don't know about it there's nothing that we can do so please if you ever have any bad experiences feel free to give us a call and we will absolutely turn around and correct that behavior what is the name of that new app that Via has for you you can actually um it'll tell you how far away the bus is yes thank you um and it's good to see some familiar faces here so we haven't formally launched it yet but we have technology coming we call it boss it's going to be the via trans online system is that the city bus they said it was attached to the city um the bus stops attached to the bus stops the beacons beacons are they talking about go mobile it's a sort of app where it could tell you how far away the bus is um what bus is coming to you okay i i i know a little bit about it because i don't think we formally launched that either right we have when i don't know something i always say i will definitely get back to you and find out why i don't have that information well that kind of information i think when we talk to tnc's for many people having that in your hand it helps it helps you know exactly what's going on control your own setting in your life so technology that like that makes makes everything work this is mainly for via yes ma'am i do both i ride paratransit and the fixed routes oh wonderful okay uh it makes it easier i know it's a cost of paratransit so i try to use a fixed route more but the transit is very good for when you have like appointments and so forth my thing is this on your fixed routes especially for the blind a lot of the drivers do not turn on the talking stop announcements yes so you're lost okay even when the bus pulls up to you it doesn't announce which bus it is okay now um i'm so a lot of a lot of them know me so they'll tell me which city is it i know i don't need you out of the but they have to understand especially with the blind if we cannot hear the bus or hear our announcements we need to be able to get on and off without having to trouble everybody in the area or trouble the bus driver right so if they can do this and if they can also too i notice you said sensitivity training on your drivers not so much the fixed route but the paratransit they need there are some that need a lot more training they unfortunately one they do not know how to approach you in terms of guidance or they sit up there and they figure oh well it's curb to curb we don't need to assist you and if you're walking here off of a curb or walking from someplace or you're not sure of yes we do use our canes as guidance but it's not always going to tell us everything and you could end up falling when it comes in terms of sensitivity they really need a of i think a more thorough training more in depth so that they can understand their different types and they have to look at everybody and realize what they're doing i thank you again for your comments and you're right they go through sensitivity training we try to do refresher courses every couple of years just to kind of keep it fresh in their minds but you know again anytime that an operator is not doing what they're supposed to please give us a call those stop announcements are on the bus for a reason it's not just technology that we paid for so that you know it's not being used it must be used that's part of of the equipment on the bus and it needs to be in use at all time so if you're ever on a on a bus and those stop announcements are not being used please report that to us we can go back and again check the video check the audio and and discipline the operator accordingly you know one thing we've done in the past with other groups is experiential training kind of like with this school for the blind does work they will actually you know basically put a person who's has no visual issues and will put some of the different kinds of blinders on and you know hand them a cane sometimes getting thrown into that or being you know we used to do wheelchairs with physical therapists to let them see how that works it's it's a totally different game than when you're just hearing it so that's always something I can so one of the things that disability essay promotes is working together as a community and not just in individual sectors whether you have intellectual and developmental disabilities or physical disabilities or sensory disabilities or mental health issues but everybody collaboratively working together to make our community better as a whole and so to piggyback off of what Rosa was saying if the if the the talk the talking device is not on on a bus whether you need that technology or not report it even if it's not beneficial for you individually if you're on a bus and the talking apparatus is not on report it because you don't know who else you might be helping so advocate for one another and let's let's help make it a better experience for everyone my question is in regards to the the technology that that you're trying to implement the apps specifically what what process do you go through to to ensure that those those apps are are accessible like what what what what means do you do you do to test those things out specifically for someone who's blind originally impaired yes so I can tell you from experience what was done in the past and what's going to be done in the future so in the past we have contracted with a technology company they roll out their product and we we have taken the initiative because we employ some people with disabilities that and we specifically have a young lady in our reservations department who is side impaired and we we say hey can you test it you know for us and tell us what issues you have the technology company did very little to help us through that process when we approach the technology company and told them we will not launch this product until it is accessible for everyone now now they are employing a third party to come in and test the application for accessibility features so now they gave us a three page report of all of the features that they are going to contract with somebody to test on that application which leads me back to to my point before I don't think the technology companies right now are it's not a major focus for them I think they feel if it works for 85% of the population then it should be okay it's not until the customer us gets involved and says we're not going to move forward with that product until it's accessible that that they've decided now to follow some testings to go through and test all of those accessibility features David back there is actually pushing for our agency to adopt a policy that says we will not move forward with any new technology unless it is accessible for everyone and so we're actually working on that right now cool district and at the Nellie Reddick Center and we've had a phenomenal relationship so far with via trans as we try to transition young adults from post high school on out and we've had a phenomenal relationship we've had a few challenges and one of those is everything outside of 1604 and then the second question I have is about the sensitivity training for the yellow cap because we have had incidents where they've been less than kind and less than compassionate with the individuals we serve so I guess finding out with that is going forward as well yes and in I'll enter the yellow cab question first and and by the way thank you for that partnership I think they even highlighted it in we've been putting some videos together for yeah and they highlighted you know your program it's been it's been great on the yellow cap side traditionally how we've used yellow yellow cab is kind of a last minute trips and so we've never had a dedicated population of drivers that have been put aside for via and so the trips were given to whatever driver was out there and closest to the trip and so they had standard training but maybe not the focus training that we would have liked now moving forward with yellow cab because of the increase in the amount of trips we're giving them one of the stipulations for that is we want dedicated drivers that have the same training that our via trans drivers have they so I think you're going to see that yellow cab is going to place a a bigger emphasis on sensitivity training they're going they're getting the same training that our via trans drivers are getting so you hopefully and if you haven't already hopefully you're going to start to see an improvement in how those yellow cab drivers are assisting the people that they're picking up and that's just part of the agreement is if you want our business you need to have the same training that our drivers have the first part of your question was about beyond 64 oh everything up to that though I would tell you we've just had a great experience and so our young adults are transitioning out as a matter of fact today we had a a driver that was dropping off an individual training at hb a baseball on itern and that young adult left their cell phone before they got out to the freeway realized that the phone was on the via transit that person doubled back and brought it back yeah I'd love to hear things like that and it was amazing and we realized that that can always happen and we have had to go down a time or two to the loss to fail and not a problem but I mean that kind of detail to their thinking yeah it's amazing absolutely concern going forward these same individuals if they're outside of 1604 it makes it more difficult to travel train and even if somebody can bring them inside 1604 the reality and the real world application is what are we going to do when they're ready to be employed and it's outside 1604 right right so um Sylvia can you just talk a little bit about the um service area that's expanding in 2018 and I wish I could tell you it's expanding by leaps and bounds but it's not but there's there's a small sliver um going up heabner um blanco up to stone oak when the stone oak park what park and ride opens it'll go up the temp a tpc parkway look just a little bit past 281 so it's going to be in that area it's not a big area but it's going to cover some of stone oak so yeah it's not further than evan's road but it does help a little bit I'm not sure where that ranch is but if it's past um I can see the map heabner going up to um stone oak and then to tpc right right that side of it yeah that's not in in the area as for it's just a small sliver that they're adding because of the stone oak parkway and so I can tell you the way that our service area expands for vitreans is that the fixed route system has to expand so as we expand our fixed route system because remember paratransit service is complementary to the fixed route service so if we have no fixed route service in an area then there will be no paratransit service so the key to getting service out there is expanding fixed route service and I do believe that as the areas grow and as um the demand grows in that area eventually fixed route will have to find its way over and then as fixed route grows paratransit will grow also but that's why we grow so slowly on the paratransit side is because it follows the fixed route sure yeah sales tax money so probably early 2018 is when that's going to happen I think somebody asked that question yeah around February if we had more funding issues to bring up and I'm sorry have a larynx issue one is when it comes to airline travel it is not under the ADA it's under the ACAA in particular when it comes to service dogs they have a separate policy for psychiatric service dogs under the ADA service dog is a service dog is a service dog under the ACAA a psychiatric service dog is demoted to the level of an emotional support animal so those with a psychiatric service dog have to bring an amazingly amount of documentation including a letter from your doctor within dated within 30 days of your flight that you have this service dog to me this is totally discriminatory against the subset of people with disabilities I am autistic technically it's kind of a washi area is this psychiatric is this neurological my him or my trainer calls ahead of time to work everything out when it comes to flying but even if it doesn't I don't have to for that trip this should not be happening where a section of our population is being discriminated against being stigmatized and being treated like their disability is not important and they don't have access and you can have trouble in the airline and end up having to pay money to have your service dog travel or having to put your service dog in with the luggage in order to have your dog travel with you this is not appropriate this should not be happening and I know it's not the city but it's it's something that I face every time I travel yeah and that's an area where there's a lot of discussion going on it's not something I've personally worked on and I can't get into the nuts and bolts of it but I can get your information afterwards and try and get you connected to someone who is but I know that is an area where they're trying to figure out how how to get the wording right so that people who need it are getting the access and then those who may be trying to abuse it because it's like it comes down to anything accessible parking the amount of abuse that's there I think they're trying to figure out ways to to do it to make sure people are getting the right access but also not allowing it to be abused so I'll try and get you in contact with someone who can talk as far as locally I have via trans but I use both depending on I have larynx and breathing issues in addition and walking issues but one of the problems I have because I have a larynx issue I never know moment to moment if I'm going to have a voice and so calling to set the ride up can be difficult especially when it comes if I need a taxi service where I have to use my cell phone and if my voice is completely gone it's very difficult for me to utilize the service I'm not hearing impaired but my voice will completely leave and so this is an issue that I'm having that I don't know how to fix so that I can be able to get to what I need and then what was brought up with the front seat there's been numerous times that I've had to go all the way in the back and go up the stairs just to get a seat and I when I first get on it's obvious I'm staggering I have a service dog and yet many times people are right there and nobody will give up the seat I will give up a seat to somebody that is needs it more than I do but there's times I'm all the way in the back and another thing that is the sidewalks like especially the trash cans some people I mean we'll leave it there just for the pickup day but other people leave their trash cans out all week long and I have balance issues and walking issues so every time I have to go like off the sidewalk and to the road there's that chance that I'm going to fall and so it's difficult to use the fixed routes sometimes if I'm having a really bad day because I'm going to have to navigate around these things and it's difficult so the and I started to talk about the app earlier clearly I was talking about the wrong app but eventually I think our boss application is going to work for you so our via online reservation system is going to allow you to use your smartphone a computer something to make your reservations online so it's an online reservation system and so that will be able to help you whenever you're not able to actually make a phone call and so we're very close we were going to roll it out in December when we found out we had some accessibility issues and so that rollout has been pushed back to probably February or March but we will definitely keep you informed because I think you'll find that application very very useful you know and some of the TNCs were actually working on some of the for the deaf community the ability even for some of the deaf drivers to be able to text back and forth so that it was all being done through text and that might be something that could be expanded into a similar situation what is a transportation network company so let's say Uber, Lyft all of those groups yeah and many others that are popping up you've actually already answered my question with the lovely day that was just up here on the reservations for via trans being made online but since I was already in line I figured I might as well come up to the mic because I would like to say that we I work with special needs individuals 18 to 22 in a transition program for Alamo Heights my co-workers over there as well but one of the things that we have found is when we're making the reservations because we do train our students to make their own reservations so that they can achieve the greatest level of independence that they possibly can and not rely on everybody around them but I do notice that there is a lot of impatience on the phones with making the reservations we have one student in particular who has a very severe stutter which was the reason I was going to ask about the online reservations but it's happened on more than one occasion where he's trying to get the first words out and the operator doesn't hear him say anything because he hasn't yet and hangs up and that's been a recurring issue and it also happens because when we're working with our other students who because all of our students have intellectual disabilities and so sometimes when they are asked a question it takes them several seconds even more to comprehend and then come up with their answer to that question and it's happened on those occasions too where we've been hung up on because oh they're not hearing a response soon enough and so I just since I was up here wanted to bring that to your attention yeah so I think the via online reservation system is going to be very useful for you too but just like the fixed drought system so one of the things that we do is all of the conversations um all those phone conversations are recorded and so if anyone ever has a an issue with the reservation agent where um maybe the reservation is being impatient reservationist is being impatient or is not providing good customer service um we ask that you call those those complaints in they still we can go back and listen to that conversation and then we can coach and counsel based on you know what we hear again that the the population the population that we serve we we expect our employees to have lots of patience and to be compassionate and to be understanding um and so they there should never be an issue with us being rude to anybody on the phone or being impatient and hanging up um so if that happens again please let us know we can certainly go back and again correct that behavior but I think everyone is really going to like Voss when we get it it's going to have the ability to make reservations you'll also have the ability to track your vehicle so that um you can see you know when it's coming it's going to be a great application once we can get it to be accessible for everyone we'll also have capabilities for making group reservations or companion reservations oh so the Voss application will have the ability for you to book a trip for your companion uh but not group reservations so um I'm from Reddix as well Barbara back there and so um my question well first I wanted to say that um I come from an area outside of San Antonio where we didn't have transit outside of Houston and um I truly appreciate what via does here because I know it's a big job so um I just want to say thank you for that my question is not so much for via but it's just a general question my uh father is in a wheelchair and so parking wise it's I know we kind of mentioned that earlier but it is a struggle for us to um because he has to have the ramp come out of his uh van and then the space on top of that to get out people are constantly you know either the space isn't big enough or it's really difficult to have enough room for him to be able to get in and out safely and I have another friend who has the same issue so I was just curious if you had seen that in any other places in the state or what you might have seen being done to try to help that accessible parking is one of the biggest issues and concerns I get calls about we've worked with a lot of groups on this um we've worked with the legislators trying to improve it it's enforcement it comes down to enforcement um I don't know if it's the same here in San Antonio but Austin if you have a placard you can park at any meter for free which makes those worth a lot of money to people so then once they have them they end up seeing an accessible parking space and they pull into them we have a lot of issues with motorcycles and scooters in Austin that use the the cross hatch the loading area and unloading area a lot and I've been working with a group parking mobility that's in Travis County in Hayes County it was created by people with disabilities it's an app apps are big tonight um but it allows you to take three pictures of the violation after you've gone through a training and you've been deputized and once you take those three pictures you walk away you're able to fill out the rest of the information and that gets sent uh to the county or the city and they're able then to uh write the ticket so it works really well for blocking issues which basically that's what it is because people don't realize when they park a foot over onto those lines that when that ramp lowers down once you get to the end of that ramp with that power chair or manual chair you can't turn um for me I drive a truck and I have a crane that swings my chair around which I need just about as much room um in Austin we've seen the city is actually removing a lot of the downtown accessible parking they've gone to making uh secure bike lanes and to do that they've had to remove a lot of the accessible parking so we have even more issues trying to find the space that's safe to park um but yes it's a growing problem it's something that we're actually going to try and work with legislators this next legislative session to tighten up the rules on how many people can get placards how accessible parking is looked at because we're not going to ever gain more parking spots even though we're an aging society and there are more placards out there than ever um but also looking at ways to encourage enforcement and not just by giving someone a fine more in the education part creating a defensive driving that's what we've found is the most valuable is almost having someone go through this class that's been created it's online it's about 90 minutes and usually by the time they get done they finally understand why they can't just use a family member's placard we actually had two people that after they'd gotten tickets decided to become volunteers to work in the program um so we're trying to expand that across the state but it's been difficult working with different cities and counties because they each have their political view on it um but what we need is people from the San Antonio area to talk to their city council members and say they want something done and we'll help you provide a solution to to do it thank you i want to thank you for the new phone app i still haven't learned how to use it and it's joining me mad but my concern is that like when i catch the 75 west commerce bus to go to the hib where i can find everything there's usually fights on that bus and it happens when the checks come in the first month and i'm most of the time i'm at the back section of the bus where it's up so the walker has to get folded out and then every the older people that are much older than myself they will not fold up their their carts and they'll just sit there and just like you can't move and it's like dead block then people crowd around the driver even though they're behind the yellow line they'll they'll block and they can't you can't get on or off and it gets difficult right my another one of my issues is the at the bus stops i know there's a city ordinance of 200 bucks if you caught smoking within the inside of that 200 feet range or the 20 feet range but still even if it's bad weather or the sun is too bright people will congregate there at the bus at the bus stop and take up the space they'll see people walkers or the wheelchairs and they won't let them get close to the bus stop or to the benches that are they're available so that's another little issue you've just described my day in public transportation so oh go ahead i'm sorry on sunday mornings at 5 30 i'm over here at wadalupe and um florist to catch a bus which means i have to get the 44 or the 43 or to travel to the park and then catch the night to get to church by seven and that's dangerous because the homeless are there lining up to go to breakfast and travel spark this church and these people are violently nuts and there's no security around and you're just there like oh please don't let it be the day you know i i can't take it and it's making me more and more afraid to come out and i'm not at the point i've already lost one wheelchair the power one and the VA is not going to replace it because it was under the four-year period so when i get when i did have the chair it was an issue like oh well there's too many people on board and i can't take you or people because people didn't vote people with the little shopping cards and all this other fun stuff they wouldn't give the seats so we could get the chair on and then you know well you end up having to wait till the next one well then that's still another you know the daily doubles of the wintery two for one specials and i just want to know how is it going to get addressed yeah so you you brought up you know a myriad of issues that i face on the daily basis so one of the things that via has been focusing on is safety right safety for our riders just nationally there's a trend in you'd be surprised there's a trend in operator assaults and you know i don't know what it is it seems like the summer months are even worse there's just people that get on the bus and they're upset and they want to take their frustration out on somebody so one of the things that we're doing is trying to increase we do have transit police police officers we have a chief of police and we have transit police officers that work for via there they are a limited number when you consider the seven thousand bus stops in our service system and the number of routes and the number of buses we don't have an opera we don't have an officer on every single bus but what we do is coordinate with s a p d with bare county and so we try to at least cover the major transit systems we also have armed security guards we have a contract for security so we we try to to put our presence out there as much as we can obviously we can't be everywhere all the time but it is the focus for future years we are adding police officers every budget year i think our director of safety and security was awarded like an additional five officers for 2018 so every year we add more officers and hopes to keep the the system safe you know one of the issues with priority seating is that you you can ask people to make room for mobility devices but we don't know that the person sitting there doesn't have a disability you know themselves we don't ask people what your disability is and so you can politely ask them but you know we can't pick them up and force them to move one of the issues that we are starting to see is there was a time when buses only had one wheelchair securement and then we added another and now we have three wheelchair securements and there are still times that they are all full there's a wheelchair in every single securement and you're right if you're in a mobility device we can't board you and you have to wait for the next bus we tell operators as a as a good practice if you're leaving a wheelchair behind call it in to dispatch so that if the next bus is an hour away we can send a supervisor out there so that person isn't waiting for an hour for the next bus if the next bus is 10 minutes away then let kindly let the person know that there'll be another bus coming in 10 minutes but you know that's something that you know nationally we're going to start to look at because we thought three three wheelchair securements was enough and and we're starting to see increasingly that more and more people are you know in mobility devices and they're riding our fixed route system so no easy answers to any of that just the last thing that I wanted to address was that when the buses are pulling up the overhead lighting that states which bus it is yes half most of the time they don't put the bright on so you can see it okay because of the glare factor you don't see just the name or the designated bus okay and you know and sometimes you end up missing bus because you don't see it in time to catch it because the bright light overhead isn't on okay that's great that's something that now that's easily that's a fixable yes that's an easy fix thank you thank you I'd like to thank Melanie and everybody here for participating and showing up I don't envy your job there's a lot of issues with via I'm living here 14 years now from New York I moved here because my grandson was born here if he was born in Wyoming I'd be in Laramie what I'm trying to tell you is we get off buses and as soon as my feet hits the concrete the bus I want to get on to takes off there has to be a system where they wait there they will make up their time by going past empty bus stops they have to park closer to the curb I'm a huge advocate for seniors I just turned 77 on Saturday and I know what they feel we don't want to stretch you don't have to have a disability device to be considered you know you could have a back spasm or whatever the deal is they're not sensitive enough they have to be trained and retrained and there was a guy yesterday he was no youngster I told him he should return his turn in his retirement papers because he was very insensitive to seniors I said why don't you lower the bus oh it'll take too long but if I go to a bus and I say excuse me I just want to get a schedule that's the same amount of time or I stopped the bus I just have a question asked there was a woman that approached me on Facebook and she says I know Leroy Allaway and I know Richard Gambita I said I know them both and I know more about transportation than the both of them put together and then she poses a question what if I want to get off at an empty bus stop obviously she's not alright you ring the bell so she got very insult I think she unfriended me but that's one of the hazards of Facebook but they have to be more sensitive seniors are a very tough lot but they can only take so much yeah and if you address simple issues like let them wait you should see the anguish on people's faces when they get off a bus it is the bus just took off I mean that's that's been going on and I explain this to Keith and I explain it to Jeff and yet it's still going on maybe since you came aboard you around seven months maybe you could do something but that's gotta stop thank you no I would say one thing on that just follow up quickly is something that I've found when we ask people to report issues is and I don't know if y'all do this or able to is to follow back up with them and let them know because that makes a big difference in someone's life so Sheila's asking about if there's advisory committees or committees that work with via to follow up on issues yes we do and thank you for asking that so we actually have an advisory committee for accessible transportation and we actually have a few vacancies on that committee so if anyone is interested in participating or serving on that committee I've got some cards up here I'll gladly give you my information and we would welcome you on the committee okay we're going to take one more question comment and then we're going to break into small groups and I will explain or Sheila will explain what those one of us will are following this last comment just want to get granular for a moment with via because with your respect to accessibility of bus stops yeah I moved to the east side a little over a year ago and at the at the intersection of commerce and new wrongfuls on the northwest corner there is a bus stop that's a southbound bus stop that goes on new wrongfuls there are no curb cuts and regularly going through that intersection I have seen people in power chairs having people coming from the bus stop across the street to help them get up on the curb I've seen elderly people in chairs would like a grandmother with a grandson trying to lift her up onto the curb part of the problem is that corner is the city cemeteries now dead people me frankly let's move the dead people a little bit but there should be I mean that is that is a really serious that's a very well very regularly used bus stop it's a major bus stop and there it really used to be I've talked to now two city council persons one major one via executive about this problem and nobody's addressing it and it's a it's a it's a it's a safety hazard it's an accessibility hazard and and via really needs to take a look at that being the city together to make that an accessible stop because that it is a serious problem for particularly for the east side because you know other people people on the east side don't have the the resources and the and and and they rely on via to get around and it's it's a matter of time before somebody's going to really occur that way you said commerce and new broncos the south it's the north yeah it's actually the north it is the northwest corner of commerce and new broncos so it's the corner it'll be the corner where the city cemetery it'll be the southbound route but it'll be the corner where the city cemetery is located we can send somebody to go check that out in the morning great thanks okay i'm going to enlist you to help us travel train so a lot of the conversation I think or some of the conversation especially with this last one talked about bus stop sidewalk curb accessibility I represent the disability access office with the city of san Antonio we do partner with via a lot to try to coordinate our projects or our bus stops and curves get accessible at the same time but if you have a concern or a complaint about a sidewalk you're always welcome to call our office about that let us know and I'll make sure I give you my card afterwards but where the disability access office with the city of san Antonio you can email us at disability access at san Antonio the 311 app um other than I know that they're getting a new system soon does does anybody here use the 311 app to report accessibility issues you do can you can you come talk about it just really quick in case there are some people here or out in um now cast land who who would um so the 311 app it's actually very convenient um you can submit pictures you can kind of send a little text if you see some kind of issue with any kind of infrastructure sidewalks um accessibility issues anything like that um potholes especially that's kind of use the very popular um yeah you just downloaded three the san Antonio I think it's just called the san Antonio 311 app you can always just call 311 also and they'll put your complaint in there hi I'm Darcy Chappool with the Texas Department of Transportation and again um I deal with our ADA accessibility here in the san Antonio district which covers 12 counties and we partner really closely with via to to try and ensure that those bus stops are accessible so um I look forward to the conversation in the small groups later about that is there anybody else here with an organization that works with transportation that would just like to identify themselves in case other people would like to talk to you as well and then um we're going to break up into our small groups but um if you work with an organization and want people to know who you are and what resource you provide in the community please just come up and very briefly introduce yourself I'm the founder and executive director of assas it doesn't exist yet because we don't have the funding it stands for san Antonio senior shopper shuttle this is a free service going to be door to door it's run by veterans it's a non-for-profit registered with the county the state etc okay it's going to cost millions of dollars where am I going to get this money from the same guys that gave us the soccer fields up a thousand oaks the city gave nine million and the county gave nine million that's how we're going to do this it takes millions of dollars to do this we're going to divide the county into four quadrants and put two buses in each one here's what happens we're giving veterans jobs seniors mobility and it's a boost for the retail economy it is going to be free it's wheelchair accessible and it's door to door if you want my card you can read the website and you'll know more about it I've been writing via for 14 years and let me tell you I don't envy you rose you got a big job ahead of you there's a lot to be fixed I'm Alex Carroll again I'm the active transportation planner for the Alamo area metropolitan planning organization just wanted to make a forum known to you all in addition to the committee we also have two committees that are always open to the public in a really good forum for delivering complaints or providing feedback we have a bicycle mobility advisory committee and a pedestrian mobility advisory committee again those are always open to the public and both committees include membership from the Texas Department of Transportation the city of San Antonio Bear County via and a lot of other agencies and so if you want to come to kind of a one-stop shop you can do that this is all just to say that there are lots of resources out there and places to go if you do have an issue and if you come to our committee meetings or if you contact me or anybody else who has already spoken we can always get you to the right person and make sure that you're that your complaint or your issue is heard. BMAC the bicycle committee meets the second Wednesday of each month and PMAC our pedestrian committee meets the third Wednesday of each month so that's just another resource out there another place to go with any issues or concerns you may have. Well thank you for all those great questions we're going to break now into small group discussions and you have some choices here Alex who is just up here Alex Carol Wave Alex with the Alamo Area MPO will be hosting a small group discussion on accessible transit service i.e. does regular bus service come to your neighborhood how is paratransit service like viet trans working for the community and bus stop accessibility i.e. does sidewalks connect to the bus stops is there room in the landing pad for people in wheelchairs to board the bus are there curb ramps choice number two is Chase Bearden with the Coalition for Texans with Disabilities is going to host a discussion on accessible parking which was an area we didn't get to cover perhaps as completely as we wanted and last of all David Guajardo is going to talk about navigating the transportation system as a as a visually impaired or blind person i think that's going to be really interesting so Melanie do we have any places people should go for the small group conversations are we just we'll do it as people are sitting so Michael raise your hand is right up here so if you would like to participate in that discussion please gather around him Alex is in the back so we'll put her right in this back section and then this sofa in these chairs up here Chase will be talking about parking accessibility and these individuals are looking for feedback in the discussions many of them so please feel free to to vocalize your experience and participate in these small group discussions thank you and if you're not participating in a small group discussion we do have our exhibitors in the back so feel free to visit with them some more and please if you're leaving leave your surveys completed surveys as well as your question comment cards so that we can continue the discussion thank you


going to talk about something about policy, something about environmental governance in India with respect to solid and liquid waste management. What I am going to do is I am going to give you an overview of environmental governance, how it started, from where it started and then I am going to talk about two cases particularly. I think few of them said that they want to understand why policy fails in practice. So, I am going to talk about two cases particularly. One is national urban sanitation policy which was released, launched in 2008 by Ministry of Urban Development and as Sir said that the policies are near prescriptions. They are just directions and actually cities and states have to adopt particular rules and regulations to implement those policies. So, I am going to talk about how this particular policy national urban sanitation policy kind of failed at city level implementation. The second case that I am going to talk about is of environmental impact assessment notification. So, this particular notification what it did was it came into existence around 1970s where environmental externalities of a particular development project were asked to be accounted in the overall cost of the development project. That means developers have to pay for the any environmental cost and I am going to talk about 2006 environmental assessment notification that makes domestic polluters like you and me also responsible for the pollution as in they have to manage their solid waste and liquid waste within the premises of their building. So, this particular case I am going to talk about in context of Bangalore and how it kind of led to adoption of mixed model of sewage management. So, there is centralized system as we discussed yesterday and today also we are going to talk about. There is a centralized model of wastewater management where the government mostly urban local bodies for state water and sewage boards they are responsible for investing capital maintaining such kind of systems and then there is decentralized system where the private parties like you and me commercial properties, technoparks all these institutions and domestic polluters are responsible for managing their solid waste putting capital investment and managing maintaining an ONM cost for that. And how this model kind of address certain issues of Bangalore city and kind of it failed in certain other aspects. So, I will just give you an overview when the environment as a concern came into picture in 5 year plans all of you are aware of what are 5 year plans right. Planning commission it kind of gives you a direction for the entire state based on the resources available based on the previous year's progresses and what were the shortfalls. Planning commission gives you an overall picture and it kind of gives a direction to state and center that this is how you can proceed for next 5 years. So, the environmental concerns actually started to or begin to reflect in 5 year plan from the 4th 5 year plan onwards. And these connections between the development and environmental externalities were first understood with respect to cities. It was not with respect to overall environment that we have to save and we have to conserve. It was the need because they were thinking that urbanization is actually impacting water bodies. So, this was in concern in connection to the urban cities in concern to the urban areas. So, the focus was on water pollution and the recommendation was to again to appraise all the development project from the lens of environmental degradation and environmental conversation, conservation. And it led to establishment of central legislation. A lot of water related legislation came into existence and we had constitution of central pollution control board, state pollution control board. So, 1970s onward you I don't know how many of you are aware of Stockholm conference that was held in 1972 and then there was in February 1972 we had a government of India constituted and committee on national council for environmental policy and planning. These two particular events led to development of lot of legislation in during following years in 1970s and in 1980s. So, as I said there is water act, air act and then there is accounting for environmental externalities and development project which was first understood for big dams and big irrigation projects in 1977. And then came 1993 in 1994 EIA notification came into existence where environmental clearance is required for all the projects and development projects. And as I mentioned the 2006 EIA notification which makes domestic polluters also part of this environmental clearance process. And then we had a umbrella legislation which is environmental protection act and most of the acts now come under this EPA act. So, this you are aware of that till 1985 we didn't have any ministry at the centre level we had department of environment. So, in 1985 only we had MOEF and under that CPCBs and SPCBs were formed which had kind of responsibility of data collection policy, implementation standard formation and policy and regulation. So, these are the particular powers of pollution control votes and I am going to go into detail. So, what are the constitutional frameworks under the 42nd amendment act? The environment kind of became part of the directive principles of the state. Before that states were not at all concerned about environmental conservation and it also became part of the list of fundamental duties of citizen that every citizen is responsible to maintaining and conserving environment. And supreme court this is very important that in case of any environmental related matter any citizen can directly go to supreme court and high court and directly file public interest litigations PILs. Policy framework we have a national environmental policy which first came in 1996. And with respect to sanitation we have national urban sanitation policy. Although judiciary has been very important very crucial in India. So, these are the doctorines that have been evolved by courts in India like public trust doctorine which was in case in 1996 where the court held that state and its other institutions are actually trustees they are maintaining natural resources on behalf of us on behalf of public. Then polluter pay principles are you aware of what is polluter pay principle? So, this also this particular principle was also kind of given by the court courts of India and then absolute liability principle. That means they are certain inherent dangerous industries like dams and gas leakages. So, in that there has to have a compensate inbuilt when you design such products. Ok, whenever you are planning such kind of projects you need to have a compensation inbuilt in those designing aspects. Now next I am going to talk about little bit I am going to give you a time-time how solid waste management the policy and regulatory framework how it has evolved over the period of time. So, very first committee that was there on urban waste was in 1970s. So, you can understand that 1970s was a very crucial period when lot of environmental related you know committees, legislations and lot of institutions were kind of made up by government of India. So, one of the earliest known committee on solid waste was by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in 1972. Till that time sanitation, public health, water supply solid waste were part of Ministry of Health. It was only after 1970s that the sanitation moved and water supply moved to Ministry of that time it used to be known as Ministry of Works and Supply which related bigger Ministry of Urban Development. So, this shows that initially these concerns were part of these were understood as a basic services, social services part of health and family welfare. They were connected to health they were understood as that the that failure in these aspect can impact public health. Later on it was become part it became part of the urban development scenario. So, then again this followed lot of lot of waste rules. First we had hazardous waste rule, 1990s there was a committee and due to the concerns of citizens or non-sintable practices in solid waste. There were lot of PIS that were filed in 1996 from different parts of the country that led to Supreme Court deciding that we need to have a committee to understand what kind is what is the status of municipal solid waste management in class 1 cities. Then led to formation of rules 2000 on solid waste management and these rules actually placed responsibility ultimate responsibility on ULBs. So, this I don't have to go through these are the regulations legislations which are under the solid waste management. At municipal level municipality can form building by-laws as I said yesterday the town planning can form building by-laws and municipality also and there are these policies that comes under which solid waste is.


A recent study conducted in Australia revealed that overall nutritional knowledge among the population was relatively high. Two distinct groups were identified based on their level of knowledge, those with higher levels of knowledge tended to be older, female, educated, experienced home economics or health education at school, have a chronic disease, and have positive attitudes towards food issues. Those with lower levels of knowledge were more likely to have type 1 diabetes or be following a diet designed to control it. These findings suggest that targeting specific populations may be necessary when communicating nutrition information.


And I think to, there's a lot of confusion in the small business community, right? There's so many resources. And I'm a small business and I have limited time. So, you're not going to waste my time.  You know, we can, I mean, we do, for our team, I think there's seven of us, seven counselors in the state of Iowa, and we do 88 events. 88 events? 88 events. And most of those, there's maybe a handful of those are not our sponsored events, but we're, you know, we may speak for five minutes or a half hour or whatever, but we're not doing all of the event prep and presentation. But yeah, that's a lot of content that we're pushing out and, you know, and then making sure that we're marketing to those vendors so that they understand what's a good use of their time. I always try to spin it, hey, you know, this may not be, you may not see, because I find with a lot of companies I work with with people in general is we all have a lens we look through life at, right? And so we tend to be pretty narrow-minded in that lens. And we only know what we know. And so I had a supervisor when I worked for the government and he used to tell me he needed to marinate on things. And so I, I'm a marinator. And so it's that whole piece with connection where, okay, I'm at an event and maybe you tell me who you are and what you do without the $10 words, because if you can't effectively communicate what it is you do to me, you do to me, I can't sell your product for you, right? And so as a PTAC, I really work with companies on, hey, how do you effectively message, first of all, what you do, and that'll help me better understand what you do so that then I can help you find those opportunities or connect you to those individuals who might need a teammate for that government contract.