By Ruben Castaneda
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Maryland officials and attorneys for people with disabilities announced the settlement of a federal lawsuit yesterday alleging widespread problems with the state's public transit service for disabled commuters.

Officials with the Maryland Transit Administration, which runs the Mobility/Paratransit service for disabled riders, and attorneys for the disabled said transportation services for disabled commuters have greatly improved since the class action lawsuit was filed in federal court in Baltimore in October 2003.

MTA officials said the number of rider complaints has been cut almost in half, from an average of nearly seven per 1,000 trips in 2004 to a current rate of 3.5 per 1,000 trips. The MTA has purchased 98 Mobility vehicles with high-tech locators that allow dispatchers to track each van at all times, and on-time performance has improved from 77 percent to 90 percent, officials said.

The Mobility/Paratransit service provides transportation to 12,300 commuters daily, MTA officials said.

The settlement is "a win-win-win situation," state Transportation Secretary Robert L. Flanagan said in an interview. He said the agreement is "not concerned with minimal standards but the pursuit of excellence."

"We all think this is a real good outcome," said Lauren Young, director of litigation for the Maryland Disability Law Center, which brought the lawsuit along with lawyers from the firm Brown, Goldstein & Levy.

"This is not an optional service -- it's so critical to people," Young said. "You can't get to your doctor; you can't get to the grocery store [without transportation]. It was very important to turn this around."

The settlement was announced yesterday at a news conference in Baltimore. Among the participants was Kristen Cox, secretary of the state Department of Disabilities, which was created by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) in July 2004.

In an interview, Cox said that, including people with mental and cognitive disabilities, one in five Marylanders is disabled.

Cox said 60 to 70 percent of the state's disabled people are unemployed, and transportation problems prevent many of them from finding or keeping jobs. In focus groups conducted across the state, disabled people listed lack of adequate transportation as one of the top three obstacles to being employed, Cox said.

The lawsuit alleged that the Mobility/Paratransit program violated the federal Americans With Disabilities Act by failing to provide adequate services to disabled people who rely on it.

The lawsuit did not seek monetary damages; it sought improvements to the transportation services.

Serious problems with the services have occurred for more than a decade, Young said. Those problems included long waits for disabled commutes, an inadequate number of vans outfitted for disabled people and instances in which riders were not picked up.

The settlement calls for the MTA to hire a consultant, jointly selected by both sides, to review mobility services and make recommendations. Fifteen disabled riders will meet with the MTA and the consultant to review recommendations and negotiate on behalf of riders.

If the administration rejects recommendations, the disabled riders can go to a federal magistrate judge to mediate the dispute, Young said. If that fails to resolve the issue, the riders can ask for a court hearing, she said.

Andrew L. Levy, a private lawyer who helped Young bring the case against the MTA, said the state initially fought the lawsuit vigorously. At the beginning of this year, state officials took a different tack, and both sides began settlement meetings, Levy said.

Flanagan said he and other state officials did not want a federal judge to oversee changes in the system. The lawsuit became an "opportunity to communicate with the disabled community and to involve them in the problem solving necessary for continuing improvement."