The Emerging Field of Travel Training Services: A Systems Perspective

Travel training provides a promising approach for moving persons from paratransit to fixed-route transportation services. This study identifies current funding trends and discusses the volume and diversity of services within the travel training instruction field. Measuring the emergence of this field focused on four properties of systems: intention, boundary, resources, and exchange. We used these properties to facilitate sharing of information and learning among the participating organizations. Initial findings indicated that older, established programs tended to be larger and moved more persons to fixed routes, while programs that employed their own staff rather than contracting out staff produced more outputs per staff person. We conclude that the diversity of the field’s innovators have strengthened the problem-solving capacity. Based on the findings, a preliminary research and evaluation agenda is proposed. Introduction Recognizing the benefits of teaching individuals to use public transportation, various professionals and organizations throughout North America have devoted resources to design and implement travel training services. Travel training refers to a program that provides instruction in travel skills to individuals with any disability except visual impairment (Groce 996). This inquiry into the emergence Journal of Public Transportation, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2008 0 of travel training studied four properties of organizations or systems—intention, boundary, resources, and exchange—suggested by Katz and Gartner ( 988) and used these properties to facilitate information sharing among the participating organizations. Jack Gorelick of the Association for the Help of the Retarded in New York City—credited as the originator of travel training services (Sauerburger 999)— formalized the first travel training programs with the New York City Board of Education in the 970s. Since then, scores of organizations began offering travel training services throughout the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. While encouraging and assisting customers to use fixed-route transit and increase their independence, travel trainers realized the benefits of creating a professional association to strengthen their efforts in refining pedagogy, discussing funding streams, communicating information about administrative and human resource policy and practice, developing mechanisms to inform themselves, and sharing promising and best practices. From these grassroots, the Association of Travel Instruction was formed in 999, with an inaugural conference held in 00 . The conference’s purpose was to share and inform colleagues about methods for training customers with disabilities to use fixed-route public transportation services (Moakley 00 ). Travel trainers work in communities where they are employed by a range of notfor-profit and for-profit organizations that include schools, human service agencies, self-advocacy organizations, transit authorities and agencies, and consulting firms. While it appears that the number of travel trainers and organizations employing travel trainers increased over the past decade, information remains limited. Three reasons are typically cited for this apparent growth. The first involves changes in federal disability policy including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 975 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 990. The second involves the promotion of travel training services by people with disabilities, family members, and professionals satisfied with how the service contributes to independence, increased mobility, and full community membership for people with disabilities. The third centers on public transportation providers that encourage cost-effective approaches for serving customers with disabilities and older adults who were frequent users of ADA paratransit services (Carpenter 994). Social innovations evolve through the diverse perspectives and efforts of participating stakeholders (Page 007; Westley, Zimmerman, and Patton 006). Within this context, travel training developed to meet the emerging needs of persons The Emerging Field of Travel Training Services: A Systems Perspective using paratransit and other transportation services. This instruction provides an innovative strategy for increasing ridership for various populations including persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities (Crain & Associates 998). Furthermore, it has become popular to demonstrate to older adults how to increase their independence through using public transportation (Burkardt, McGavock, and Nelson 00 ). Representatives of public transit agencies state that having persons with disabilities use conventional transit provides a cost-effective alternative. Achieving this required that conventional transit become more accessible (Iannuzziello 00 ). Without an organizing body with oversight responsibilities or debate on guiding principles, there currently exists no generally accepted definition of travel training service. To bring greater cohesiveness to the field, Project ACTION (Accessible Community Transportation in our Nation) began funding more than 0 related projects (Weiner 998) in an effort to delineate the knowledge and skills recommended for professional travel trainers. Commissioned by the U.S. Congress in 988 as a national research and demonstration project, Easter Seals Project ACTION (ESPA) serves as a national training and technical assistance center on accessible transportation. While each travel training service is unique, the major activities typically include a comprehensive set of services including assessment, trip planning, familiarity of the built environment, travel instruction plan development, and strategies of instruction. These strategies focus on crossing streets, using public conveyor systems, boarding, riding, alighting vehicles, and handling emergencies (ESPA 007). This study addresses three areas of interest to advocates of travel training service. First, we attempt to quantify the current practices, capacities, and outputs of travel trainers employed by transit authorities and agencies. Second, we identify the initial trends in order to inform travel trainers and organizations attempting to improve their services. Finally, we propose an evaluation and research agenda to enhance further the travel training profession. We applied a systems evaluation framework focusing on the three waves of systems theory: general systems theory, cybernetics, and complexity science (Midgley 006). General systems theory encourages stakeholders to consider the three levels of systems involved in the persons’ lives: ( ) the micro level involves family and friends, ( ) the mezzo level involves local organizations providing services, and (3) the macro level involves federal and state policy affecting the provision of services. Journal of Public Transportation, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2008 General systems theory considers the interactions between client systems that are interconnected and include family/friends, education, employment, and health services. Understanding these interconnections improves an organization’s ability to respond to the emerging preferences of users (Wolf-Branigin 006) and builds robustness in the users to assure that they can adapt to changing conditions (Greene 00 ). For example, using spatial data on housing locations can identify that persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities who live independently or semi-independently reside closer to public transportation routes when compared to persons living in group homes (Wolf-Branigin, LeRoy, and Miller 00 ). Assuring that the diverse strengths, needs, and preferences of each customer receive sufficient attention relies on the perspectives of multiple stakeholders. While this includes the development of the travel training field from the ground up, it also requires that necessary conditions be in place (e.g., support from transit agency administrators and board members). Federal directives and incentives, plus the support and promised referrals from human service agencies further strengthen the field’s robustness. As Williams and Imam ( 006) state, recognizing three patterns within systems thought—perspectives (assumes benefits can be found from investigating phenomena differently), boundaries (defines what is inside or outside the scope of inquiry), and entangled systems (observing systems within systems)—aids in analyzing viable organizations and how they develop in response to stakeholder needs. We studied four properties—intention, boundary, resources, and exchange—in order to facilitate sharing of information and learning within the participating organization (de Geus 994). Interactions occur within organizations where customers have multiple options from which to make decisions. This information feeds back into the system to inform the customers and their transit facilities (Proehl 00 ). Within a complex systems framework, these results represent the travel training network’s emergent behavior (Pozatek 994; Rhee 000; Bolland and Atherton 999; Agar 999; Halmi 003).