Transportation Access for Everyone: Washington State

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Transportation Access for Everyone: Washington State
Image Description: Cover of the report with a picture of a brown-skinned woman with long dark hair in a wheelchair reaching up to press a push button to request a walk signal on a sidewalk at the corner of a four-lane arterial. She wears a dark mask and dark long-sleeved jacket that is open, revealing a black t-shirt that reads “Disability Mobility Initiative.” Text above image reads, “Transportation Access for Everyone: Washington State. August 2021.” Text below reads, “Produced by the Disability Mobility Initiative, Disability Rights Washington.”

 

Check out some of the press coverage of our report in The Daily News (Longview), StreetsblogUSA, Everett Herald, South Seattle Emerald, KUOW, Seattle Bike Blog & The Urbanist.

For the last 10 months, the Disability Mobility Initiative has interviewed over 125 disabled nondrivers from every legislative district in our state about our transportation needs. Those interviews are featured in our transportation access story map, and now we’ve compiled the expertise from those interviews into a groundbreaking research paper.

You now view that paper here, as well as download as a PDF or Text document. Watch, listen to or read the transcript of our launch event here.

If the recommendations we make seem enormous and costly that is because they reflect decades of underinvestment in equitable and truly accessible mobility. To begin to address this inequity, we recommend two major actions:

  • Shift resources to prioritize funding accessible pedestrian infrastructure and reliable transit service.
  • Look to nondrivers as transportation decision makers and experts.

To ensure this redistribution of resources, nondrivers must have a seat at the table. This begins with transportation planners and decision makers viewing us as the experts we are. Our knowledge is rooted in years of navigating sidewalks, buses and paratransit systems that most transportation professionals rarely use.