A person with developmental disabilities taking public transportation independently
Channel: Special need Life with Devon Ray Hillary
Date: 2022-06-28

I want to share a little story about myself with autism and mild intellectual disability taking public transportation independently.  

At the age of fifteen in the late spring of 2002, I was travel trained of learning how to take public transportation by subway and the city bus to school and back home. At first, I felt unsure and less confident that I would be able to do it; I thought I would rather continue riding on the school bus to school and back home; it would be the safest way to travel. Back in late fall 2001, I had a conversation with the leader of the Travel Training program in the Bronx, who was a travel trainer. He questioned if I was interested of being travel trained for learn how to use public transportation to school and back home – and that was the time I felt unsure if I wanted to have that new experience.   

However, around May 2002, since the leader of the travel training program introduce me to the travel trainer who was going to train me of using public transportation to school and back home, he taught me how to get home on the city bus and subway. I gradually started to enjoy it even though it was my first time using real public transportation. He had been traveling and training me through the month of May; it was the most challenging thing I had ever done in my life.    

In the next month of June, the travel training exam was completed; I was officially an independent person, who could travel on the subway and bus to school and back home all by myself. Therefore, that caused me to discontinue traveling on the school bus to school and back home, permanently. However, before I was travel trained for taking public transportation during my ninth-grade year of High School (between fall 2001 and mid-spring 2002), my Para-Professional of inclusion and I had kept on leaving my eighth and final period inclusion class early, for me to be in time for bussing.  

Ever since I learned how to take public transportation independent, has been a big permanent life-changing experience! I was taking public transportation independently for the rest of my life. But as an adult, traveling out has been making me feel half fearful because of being into some unexpected incidents, everyday misunderstandings, and all other common negative assumptions about my behavior with autism and mild intellectual disability.    

Overall, I and any grown-up with disabilities can learn how to travel independently to cope, benefit, and experience the reality of everyday independence. Additionally, despite the downsides, weaknesses, and negatives of traveling, learning how to travel independently is a great way for all other people with disabilities to learn, live, and experience becoming independent. Traveling independently been helping me open up to social, educational, and employment opportunities.