As stipulated by a settlement agreement reached in December of 2020, Amtrak has now distributed $2 million dollars in damages to more than 1,500 individuals who experienced disability discrimination while traveling or attempting to travel via the railway. According to a statement released by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on January 12, 2022, the payments fulfill part of a settlement agreement following a determination from the DOJ that Amtrak, after a decade of inertia on accessibility, failed to ensure stations in its system were accessible to people with disabilities as required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990.
The payments saw a delay from late 2020 to 2022 so that authorities could properly identify and locate those affected by discrimination in order to compensate them. But even a year post-settlement, the payments are only the first step of many that Amtrak is required to take to fulfill the agreement and ultimately remove any barriers in accessibility for those with disabilities.
When “all aboard” doesn’t include everyone
The lawsuit settlement agreement comes as the culmination of an investigation the DOJ began into Amtrak back in 2013. After years of reports of various accessibility issues in train stations nationwide, a 2013 report from National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) was the final straw that prompted a vigorous DOJ investigation into the rail giant. The NDRN report asserted that Amtrak trailed considerably behind other transportation providers in making travel fully accessible to people with disabilities. Upon close investigation, a litany of accessibility barriers was discovered at nearly 80 stations nationwide, including:
- Waiting areas too narrow to accommodate wheelchairs
- No clearly designated accessible parking areas
- Inclines onto platforms and track crossings too steep for passengers in wheelchairs to ascend or descend
- Bathrooms and stalls not large enough to accommodate wheelchairs
These failures in basic accessibility were not only inconvenient, embarrassing, and potentially harmful for people with disabilities who traveled with Amtrak but were—legally speaking—also a violation of their federal civil rights, according to the lawsuit filed by the DOJ.
Next steps in accessibility
Now that the $2 million has been disbursed to those affected by the discrimination, the next step in fulfilling the lawsuit settlement will be the task of overhauling at least 135 train stations to meet accessibility requirements. Specifically, over the next nine years, Amtrak is required to:
- Redesign around 90 stations across the country, completing the appropriate renovations to make them fully accessible to all passengers
- Begin full-on construction projects at 45 other stations in order to comply with accessibility standards
- Retrain staff on their obligations to facilitate compliance with accessibility requirements as outlined by the ADA.
The railway reports having allocated about $145 million for accessibility improvements at 43 stations for 2022 alone. The changes are welcome, but also much delayed. With the passage of the ADA in 1990, Amtrak was ordered by Congress to make its rail network fully accessible and was given until 2000 to become ADA compliant, but the Justice Department's investigation found that they simply did not make real efforts to do so. In fact, the DOJ indicated in the suit that the department believed Amtrak’s failures were intentional and that without legal intervention, inaccessibility as a general business model would likely continue. As per the lawsuit: “Unless restrained by this Court, Amtrak will continue to violate the ADA and cause harm to individuals with disabilities."
Making headlines for inaccessibility
The lawsuit and its subsequent settlement agreement have brought the rail giant a bit of not-so-welcome notoriety, press that has come on the heels of another news story that serves as a telling indicator of how the company views accessibility and its disabled passengers. As NPR reports, in January of 2020, two travelers in wheelchairs attempted to book spots on a train traveling from Chicago to Bloomington, Illinois. The short ride is normally only about $16, but Amtrak wanted the disabled passengers to pay $25,000 each for a spot on the train. Upon realizing the optics of the situation weren’t great, Amtrak reversed course on the $25,000 fee, but the damage to the company’s reputation had already been done.
As Amtrak’s missteps in accessibility become more visible, hopefully, the attention serves as motivation for the rail giant to make accessibility a priority even in the absence of the Department of Justice forcing ADA compliance via lawsuits.
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