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The impetus was to assess pluses and minuses of a national mandate with specific paratransit guidelines per “the” 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) model. Two European countries were chosen to explore other ways to serve persons with disabilities, not driven by ADA.

This research compared mandates in each area (via a tri-lingual survey) both as related to ADA’s most common practices and the European model of “Persons with Reduced Mobility” (PMRs). After data collection, analysis compared and contrasted ADA and PMR schemes.

Even in California, differences were found among survey sites; for instance, the organization type and mix of services varied greatly, despite a national framework. In Europe, there were more similar approaches among regions where, without a national framework, there was flexible, regional decision-making. In Europe, the national focus is on more regular transit accessibility, maximizing transit use rather than special services.

Five recommendations resulted and apply most directly to California and equally for agencies with or without ADA. The strengths of the PMR approach are transferable to California and the trend among a few California partners to go beyond ADA, while only a local option, reinforces the strength of the PMR solution.

How to improve service and financial performance and enlarge the private sector role are put forward. Existing methods, whether Federal or California-driven, need revisiting to achieve true benefits of coordination.

To explore how the rise of Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) may affect paratransit.

A review of published material and interviews with paratransit managers.

TNCs, typified by Uber and Lyft, are having a significant impact on the taxi industry, which is affecting some US paratransit programs for people with disabilities because it limits the ability of those programs to partner with taxis for a portion of their service. However, some programs have avoided these negative impacts by contracting with taxi companies in a way that provides guaranteed work for some number of drivers.

Paratransit programs might be able to partner with TNCs much as they do now with taxis. However, a number of significant issues would have to be addressed including the lack of any way to schedule a trip in advance, little or no monitoring or dispatching assistance provided to drivers at the time of service, insurance coverage that does not meet typical public agency requirements for contracts, limited screening of drivers or inspection of vehicles, lack of specialized driver training, lack of any provision to negotiate rates, and lack of wheelchair accessible vehicles.

US civil rights legislation applies to TNCs and requires them to serve individuals with disabilities who can use the service; assist with the stowing of mobility devices; not charge higher fares or fees for people with disabilities; and allow service animals.

The value is to help paratransit programs and policy makers adapt to changes in the market for transportation services brought on by technology.

To develop a framework for estimating the economic benefits of an accessible and inclusive society and implement it for the Canadian context. The framework measures the gap between the current situation in terms of accessibility and inclusiveness, and a counterfactual scenario of a fully accessible and inclusive society.

The method consists of three steps. First, the conceptual framework was developed based on a literature review and expert knowledge. Second, the magnitudes for each domain of the framework was estimated for the reference year 2017 using data from various sources. Third, several sensitivity analyses were run using different assumptions and scenarios.

It was estimated that moving to a fully accessible and inclusive society would create a value of $337.7bn (with a range of $252.8–$422.7bn) for Canadian society in the reference year of 2017. This is a sizeable proportion of gross domestic product (17.6%, with a range of 13.1–22.0%) and is likely a conservative estimate of the potential benefits.

Understanding the magnitude of the economic benefits of an accessible and inclusive society can be extremely useful for governments, disability advocates and industry leaders as it provides invaluable information on the benefits of efforts, such as legislation, policies, programs and practices, to improve accessibility and inclusion of persons with disabilities. Furthermore, the total economic benefits and the benefits per person with a disability can serve as inputs in economic evaluations and impact assessments.

Looks at the way in which public transport is used for evacuation of personnel in the event of emergencies or disasters. Although the work of the emergency services is well documented, it seems that the important task of evacuation, and particularly the planning, operation and documentation is often overlooked. This article looks at how public transport copes with this task, and suggests that this is due to the sometimes unpredictable nature of the transport system due to roadworks, road closures, accidents, etc. Special events, such as football matches, are a regular occurrence, which include the need to move large crowds to and from the venue. This strategy and planning can be used in the evacuation of people in the event of a disaster.

Although there has been some attention to how notions of entrepreneurship and family intersect in the life of family businesses, analysis of these issues in relation to inter‐generational and organisational emergence in small family firms is underdeveloped. In order to redress this imbalance, it is important to undertake analysis of entrepreneurial issues alongside those of family, ownership, management and inter‐generational emergence. A fourth entrepreneurial axis is added to Gersick's developmental life cycle framework to facilitate this. This is then applied to aid interpretive analysis of two second generation owner‐managers and sons‐in‐law of the original founders of a small manufacturing company in the UK. Working with his younger brother‐in‐law, the two family members are responsible for taking a small steeplejack company into its third generation and a new electrical engineering market. As the younger brother‐in‐law takes on an entrepreneurial role within the company and endeavours to develop new opportunities, the chairman gives an account of the struggles involved in achieving a balance between ownership, management and family tensions. The notion of “interpreneurship” whereby family members are interacting and creating new possibilities for themselves, their lives, their organizations whilst drawing upon past events, happenings, experiences and conversations that have gone before, is also considered.