By Stephan A. Parker

Staff Officer

Transportation Research Board

TCRP Report 160: Paratransit Emergency Preparedness and Operations Handbook provides paratransit service providers with guidance, strategies, tools, and resources to plan and prepare for, respond to, and recover from a range of emergencies. The guidance has applicability to urban, suburban, rural, and tribal paratransit operating environments. Guidance is directed to in-house paratransit operations and to paratransit services operated under contract. It has relevance for Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) paratransit and general public demand-response operations.

The guidance, strategies, and tools in this Handbook are based on an all-hazards approach that has applicability to a wide range of "notice" and "no-notice" emergency events including accidents and incidents, acts of nature, hazardous materials releases, technological emergencies, criminal activities, and terrorism. A significant focus of this Handbook is providing information that will assist paratransit providers in planning to meet the needs of their customers during local emergencies. The Handbook also addresses (1) the role paratransit could play in responding to community emergencies and (2) the coordination with emergency management, first responders, and other key stakeholders that is required to carry out that role successfully.

In the research effort led by Boyd, Caton & Grant Transportation Group, Inc., the research team conducted 60 interviews with over 150 local, state, and national experts in paratransit emergency preparedness and response; the interviews were used to validate the findings of a focused literature review and to identify effective emerging practices that may not be reflected in contemporary literature and planning guidance. The team developed a lessons-learned matrix of key findings, effective practices, and their applicability to urban, suburban, rural, and tribal paratransit operations in both notice and no-notice emergencies. Finally, the research team conducted two validation workshops of the draft Handbook-held in Los Angeles, California, and Fargo, North Dakota-to obtain feedback from urban and suburban paratransit managers, transit managers, emergency managers, first responders, and other partner agencies. The resulting Handbook features a field-tested Capabilities Assessment Checklist, which is a self-assessment tool to aid agencies in addressing critical paratransit emergency preparedness and operations issues.

This project created four products that are available on the TRB website (http://www.trb.org/Main/Blurbs/168321.aspx): (1) the Handbook, described above; (2) the contractor's final report, which documents the development of the Handbook, including detailed information on the interviews; (3) an HTML version of the Handbook; and (4) a PowerPoint presentation describing the entire project.