Changing relationships in the financing of elderly and handicapped transportation services

This paper reports the results of a national survey of providers of specialized transportation services who are recipients of UMTA Section 5 or Section 9 funding and report owning demand responsive vehicles (Section 15 report). The study reports a variety of service measures, financial data, cost containment activities and related information for fiscal years 1980 and 1982. For a limited number of systems, financial data for fiscal year 1984 are also reported. Analysis of the data indicates a general but as yet uncertain trend towards declining UMTA participation in funding these systems, increased fares and increased usage of cost containment and cost reduction techniques by the responding systems. Should the reported trends continue, then the responding systems could be expected to have financial difficulty in complying with the currently proposed regulations for the enforcement of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.