**Note: The output shown below is from the Communication A ccess Realtime Translation**  **(C ART) system used in the Rooms and Spaces Subcommittee Meeting #** **6 and is generally**  **unedited. T** **he CA RT sy** **stem w as used to provide an accommodation to persons with**  **hearing l oss and persons who are deaf, and was streamed in real** **- time and available to the**  **public on the internet during the meeting.** Thursday,November 20, 2014 United States Access Board Rail Vehicles Access Advisory Committee Rooms and Spaces Subcommittee Meeting #6

1:00 p.m. CART Operator: CCromartie
** The following is a Rough Draft transcript and not a verbatim record**

Paul: Good afternoon, this is Paul Beatty, welcome to the sixth meeting of the subcommittee. Since anyone may participate in subcommittee discussions, [no] time for public comment has been scheduled for this two—hour call. It appears we have the CART chat function operating. So would those individuals only participating by CART, if you desire to make a statement or raise a question, please indicate it in the chat box, and we'll let the subcommittee chair know. When speaking, remember to give your name, and as a reminder, your next conference call is,
—— I don't have any calendar in front of me. But we'll give you that at the end of the call.»» We decided not to have one in December, as I recall. So it's January.

Paul: Correct. Rose has already introduced everybody, so I'm going to turn the call over to Dennis Canon the chair of the subcommittee. Dennis Canon: Okay, thank you folks. The agenda is not long, and I don't know if anybody's got anything we need to do. The next steps is sort of like new business and deciding what we're going to do next. Anybody have questions or comments about the agenda? Hearing done, let's
—— these are kind of in the reverse order. The document I want the look at first is basically the larger one, the original one which is down towards the bottom. It's dated September 4th it's subcommittee report. As we discussed last time because of some comments thatweremadeby LindaMartin aboutwhat the statute saidwith respect to having the restroom in every car, I looked the statute up, and by the I have a marked up copy of that
—— by the way, I have a marked up copy of that which I think I should sent the Paul so he can put it up on the web, just so we can see it. And the issue there was that in the definition of "inner city rail" in the statute isAmtrak. So other things, even though they're runningbetween cities, are not considered inner city rail for the purposes of the ADA. It maybe considered inner city for other statutes. And Amtrak, for inner city rail specifically says in order to be accessible a car has to have space for a wheelchair, a transfer space, a storage space, and a restroom. So every car in Amtrak from the statute has to have a restroom. That is not the case forthings like commuter rail or any other private rail. And commuter rail is basically, it says if you don't have a restroom in a car for the general public, then you don't have to have a accessible restroom. Imodified the scope. . When we looked over this the last time, the stuff that's still in redessentially says,taketheAmtrakoutofthat issue ofhaving a restroom in a second car. It sets forth the requirements. So that's not new. That was there last time. What's new, and I want tomake sure I captured everythingthatwediscussedlasttime,thenew stuffisingreen. Andwetalked about side transfer in the rest room, and therewas a discussion aboutwe should actually add a space for that side transfer. In other words, a clear space on the side of the toilet that you actually need to make the side transfer. And so what's in green, I don't know if you
—— I think it was double underlined
—— any way. It's the second bullet point says "allow side transfer to the toilet." And what's in green is clear floor space of 32X 54, and that it'smeasured. The 32 ismeasured from the outer rim of the toiletBowl outward and the 54 is measured from the back wall of the toilet. So I wanted to make sure that I captured that. And the other thing that's new is the ANSI specification forverticalgrabbars. So Iwantedtodiscussbriefly,ifpeople have got comments to see whether I've captured the things we discussed, and whether we need to add some additional provisions. So go ahead anybody.»» This is Ken. I think this is just a typo in the version that was posted. Just it says 52 inches to be measured from the back. It's supposed to be 32 by 54, right. Correct. Right. Right.
»» Ken: That's just a typo, but I think it was very important that we put in the side approach, the specific thing saying
—— to allow a side approach. And I totally defer on the amount of space that's necessary. Because that's one of the things that I don't always understand is the exact spacing. But you know, the provision for side approach is really critical from what I'm understanding. Dennis: Right. And the numbers, the 32by 54 are simply the numbers that we decided on already as being the space allocation we're going to give the a wheelchair. That's all that is. You're right. There is a
—— Ken: I just don't remember what the numbers are. I just could see that there was a typo, that's all. Blair: Let's backup in the red text, on the scoping. And I know we've had some discussion about this. I had a brief conversation with Linda about what
—— does the way it's worded, because it's in the statute, does it preclude or prevent Amtrak from receiving an equivalence in the of situation of trains, having spaces in adjoining cars but only one restroom between those. The impression I got that it does not preclude doing or attempting an equivalentfacilitation,but obviously theburden tobe on the railroad and the carbuilder to do that. Dennis: Right. That discussion actually had talked to Linda and Calvin yesterday in a group working on The Texas Central Railway which is where some of this came from and the videos. And the issue is, equivalent facilitation is essentially available for anybody under any circumstances. So my guess is, and I'm not the legal expert, but my guess is, equivalent facilitation on this is open, even if it's not —— even if it's sort of "contrary" to the statute. But that's a interpretation that FRA will have to make. And if Linda's inclined to think that that's possible, that's probably doable. It's FRA's regulation, they're DOT's regulation, and it can interpret itanyway theywant. So I suspect that will be available to people.
»» Okay, I just wanted to clarify that going forward. Because that was a concern. I did not know how
—— if it being statutory, if it eliminated that capability, and I think what we're up against is, when the ADA was originally crafted,wewere running nopermanently coupled trainswith thepossible exempt of our turbo liners up in New York State. And will was no —— even the thinking of the day was that we probably wouldn't run fixed train sets because of the maintenance issues. You take a whole train out instead of just a car. Obviously that has changed a lot. And as we're going forward, not justAmtrak,but us as a nation, hoping to expand rail, looking at the European builder, that's a very common thing for them to do, to try to maximize revenue seating again. So any way, we'll have to see how that goes along. But I did want the make that point. Dennis: Right. And I'm hoping that
—— and I think that FRA's inclined to move forward on this. So I want to make sure again that I caught all of the stuff that we discussed. So does anybody have questions about either the green or —— let's see, I don't think there's anymore green in those two —— oh, one thing I'll tell you. I put the figure in there, which is the
—— comes from the via rail design that Uwe sent. And it originally had two drawings that showed one, the seating
—— I mean the washroom and the other. And he put them both together into a single drawing, which was great and then when I tried to copy it into this document, it pulled them apart again. So,
—— »» I will send you a new version of that. You know, these things happen sometimes when you transfer from one system to another. I'll send you the one that has both together. Dennis: Okay. Good. So apologize for that. It's kind of weird.
»» Blair: I have two points to make. And one is around the by
—level lounge car —— the bi
—level lounge car. Right now we're assuming that we're going to have the vertical capability. But in the event that we don't, or even if we do, we have a destination about seating space in a single level. But I don'tthink we have anything to that level of detail for the bi
—level.

Dennis: Yeah.

»» Right now the way everything works is, the dining space is in the bi
—level lounge in the lower level. Whether it's in the upper level or the lower level, I would think you would want a similar level of
—— a similar degree of access, as far as seating space in both single and bi
—level cars. Dennis: Okay. Ihave the scopingprovision for the lounge car sayswhere vertical access is provided. So that you don't have
—— this particular piece, that's up to your committee to decide whether that's going to be a requirement. So I want to make sure that we have accessible seating in
—— it says where vertical access provided accessible seating spacers shall also be provide on the upper level.
»» Okay, but from a quantity standpoint, the thinking has always been that you have
—— whether you have vertical access or not, the lounge car box a place where you can have table space away from your regular accommodation, whether it's a coach or a sleeper. And right now, I mean, the cars that we built with Bombardier in the early 90's had two space, we just built them that way to park wheelchairs, or transfer. So, just it would seem to be to avoid any confusion that it might be worth throwing that in there like we have on the single
—level. Just to improve thedefinition. That's my recommendation for what it's worth. The other thing is, on the Via Sleeper, the sink, the hand wash sink, I think I mentioned this the lasttime. Idon't know, I sortofwokeup ina cold sweatonenightthinking about this sink. ...Laughter... That's pretty sad when that's what you think about is sinks. One of the things that we ran into with the single
—level car, we sort of traditionally had sinks that you could
—— that you could get to, but they didn't necessarily meet the architectural requirements for rolling under. You could get at them from the side. You know, but you couldn't do a head
—on sink condition. And that was pointed out as being a flaw based on the letter that was issued by DOT, I think in 2012. And so we actually are in the midst of modifying those cars, as a result of that,evenbefore they are released. So that's something that I think it would be nice to have some clarification on. Just because it would make
—— if you took the Via Rail as a starting point right away, trying to have a sink that you would have a straight
—on access to, it could be problematic. So, don't want to get into a design process here on the call, but, itmight be
—— it would seem appropriate to put that in, at least to get some kind of clarification for the future. Dennis: Right. That's always been a problem with the head
—on, knee and toe clearance under a lab. Because I've never seen a situation where you actually
—— well, the old Amtrak's sort of had sort of
—— but you still hadto approach it from the side. And one of theproblemswith rail cars is, unlike buildings you don't have a wide wall to sort of run pipes and stuff down. So I think that's worth mentioning, though, that wherever we can, we want to try to get a knee and toe clearance under the lab. I'm just not convinced that it's feasible in all the cases. But we'll let the designers worry about that. But I think it's worth noting, at least. That we want to the that if we can.

Uwe [Rutenberg] : You know, I think I agreewithBlair. Ideally, andwhat you said, Dennis as well, ideally you would have enough knee space underneath so that you can approach the laboratory front
—on. But as you say, sometimes, if you have limitations, as we had here, so that you can only have a partial clearance and you can approach it more or less from four to five degrees, but certainly not from the front and reach to the sink there. But yeah, I agree. Ideally it should be made in such a way that you would havetheclearanceunderthe sink sothatyoucanapproachit face
—to—facethere. Dennis: Blair, my recollection is that there were some older Amtrak cars that actually had a fold down lab, is that correct in. Blair: That's correct. The AmFleet car original, as you say, accessible/non

—accessible restroom had a fold
—down lab, and the sleepers, the roomettes and the sleepers all had fold down labs as well. In one the earlyattempts to make an accessible sleeper used an old car, and a converted one of those roomettes, it kept the fold
—down lab. So, you know, that sort of creativity could certainly work. Obviously if it's a fold down lab, then it has to meet other requirements so that you can actually manipulate it safely. You know, the force requirements and those sorts of things. So just
—— I just think it's worth, since it's come up already, I think it's worth mentioning somehow. And maybe
—— I don't know how we do it, or what the proper wording would be, but somewhere in there, I think you need to have it at aminimum there needstobeatechnicalexplanationandadiagram forhowthe sink isaccessible, even if it'snotaccessible intheperfectarchitectural sense. But it'swithin reach range, and things like that. Dennis: Okay, I'll add a note to that effect, if I —— and we'll look at that next time as we go through this. Uwe: I have another comment on the sleeper compartment there. We had a lady traveling from Toronto to Vancouver the other day on our new sleeper train there, the one that you saw here in the drawing. And one thing that she mentioned, and I haven't come across this, maybe somebody else has. She said, when she is using the lower bed, which is the one for the disabled person, she would like to see something on the side on the open side that prevents her from rolling out or falling down. And I don't know if that's a design issue, or somebody else has come across this. Just mentioning as, you know, a commentthat came up. Also on page 2, I think you put in green there, Dennis, the call button. You have that page there? Dennis: Let's see... Uwe: It's under your drawing there on page 2. It's the last bullet in bold, I think it's in green. It says "call button that will have audible and visual indication." Dennis: We haven't gone through that piece yet that's in the controls and mechanisms part. »» She mentioned that when she was in the sleeper as a very important part. I just want to reinforce that. Because when they call, they have no feed back if the call will be answered or not. And unfortunately, we didn't have in our control anything like a light, or an audible signal that said, you know, your call has gone through, wait until someone calls. Like you on the airplane, you call the flight attendant, the light goes on. You have a sound, they come and have to turn it off. So there's a reaction there to this. And I think the samewouldhappenhereaswell. Soyes, Ithink it'savery importantpoint.

»» Yeah. Dennis: Let's finish this fist part, then I want to get to the controls and operating mechanisms piece. Blair: I was going to make a comment about the attendant call, but I'llwait.Dennis: Okay. Anything on the main body that I missed? Add some notes —— I'm going the add some notes about under
—sink clearance and so forth. When I pulled up —— and I'll send the document to Paul that has the statutory language, I only looked at the pieces that talked about inner city and commuter rail. I vaguely recall that the statute also talks about equivalent facilitation, but I'm not positive. That would be worth look for. And I'll see if I can find out whether that's there or not. Because that would help. If the statute references it, then it seems that it would be applicable to essentially doing a different design than the statute called for. But we'll get to that later. Okay, let's go to controls and operating mechanisms here. That's the actual
—— the first document right under the agenda. And I picked this for the most part from a couple of sources. Actually I pulled part of it from the proposed bus reversion. I pulled part of it from the ADA accessibility standards for facilities. And I added that provision that Uwe mentioned about the call button is actually a provision that's in the ADA standards for elevators. The elevator call button in an elevator has to have some means by which you, when you push the button, you get a feedback, which is either
—— both audible and visual. And then when it's responded to on the other end, there's some feedback that tells you it's responded. Some elevator panels actually have a lighted sign that lights up that says"help is on the way." In some of the elevators here in metro, there's a button that you push for the call button, and it lights up, beeped and answered, when it's answered it go, beep, beep, beep, beep. Or there's actually an audible sound where the speaker says can I help you or something. I got that comment in part from a —— some comments to the controls and operating mechanisms that was put —— sent in by somebody who was responding and sent it to Melissa, I believe. And so I added that in there. But the scopingprovision isbasically to make sure that all of the operable parts
—— and I took the definition of operable part out of the ADA/ABA facilities section, which essentially says, everything that you use to manipulate turn on, turn off, plug into, whatever, is an operable part. Then it talks about all of the things where you need to have themnear the dining compartment, the seating locations, transfer seating, inner city rail, call button to some trained personnel shall be provided at wellchairtransfer seatings,within sleepingcomepartibleandrestrooms. All lights and Hvac that will meet the requirements. The upper lights, all the lights you need a upper set of controls for the lower bunks so you can turn it on and off without being in the bunk. We have a provision that says you can have duplicate or redundant controls. The heights of the controls, there's a drawing that shows it's actually for the bus situation, which sets the height at, between 24 and 48 inches. Ed Steinfeld isn't on the phone, I think. But we had a different provision inthe ADA Accessibility Guidelines for Facilities. I think 15 inches was the lowest. I don't know what the latest version is. But the numbers, the 24 the 48 were sent to me by a commenter who said that that came from Ed Steinfeld's research. So, one of the questions in the comment I got in the mail was, was that going to be the right range. And I think the answer is, yes. The newest research shows that. We also have a distance reach of 10 inches, max. I put in the provision about the controls being 12 inches minimum from a inside corner so that you don't have to push into a corner. Redundant controls are permitted. And then it sets force requirements, power door buttons have to be two inches across. Controls meet Section 508, that has to do with tactile and a variety of other things that are in the 508 Standards. And then the lastprovision that I added, after this comment I got was the call button shall have audible and visual indication that the call has been received or responded to. So that is the extent of, you know, that's all the controls and operating mechanisms. Do people have comments at any of that?
»» This is Ken. I sometimes get mixed up, you know, which subcommittees have which jurisdiction. But I think we had a discussion on, like rapid rail and maybe lightrail as well, when we were having the discussion about 32
—inch wide clear space. One of the alternatives I think that was in the proposal, I think someone road was to have a call
—— an intercom call thing, so that if you werestuck because of a broken door on a rapid rail or transit car, you know, you'd have a means to contact the operator to say, hey, stop the train, you know, this door's not working, I can't get out, don't leave. And so, just
—— again, if we use the control stuff around the specific dimensions, I think that this is something that would be cross referenced. Dennis: Right. The way Regs are usually written is, —— and the board will figure out how to put this together
—— you have a scoping provision that says, you know, in a car, where the seating space is, you'll have a call button, it meets the requirements of
—— then you reference the section. So you transform so you sort of put everything all together in one little place.
»» Yeah. And I would say, —— this is Chris. I would say for
—— I think it's just important that you guys indicate your overall intent, and not necessarily worry about the exact specificity of every little detail.

»» But I do think it's worth, at least in a note, mentioning that this is going to call
—— a call button is not just like the call button at your seat in an plane that calls the attendant. If in this case the call button is for a emergency situation. Chris: That's fine. Dennis: Right. Anybody else have comments?
»» Yeah, Dennis, this is Blair. Is it appropriate to talk about the attendantcall system?

Dennis: Sure. Blair: Just to give a quick overview of the way our system works now, to think about. In rooms that are not designated "accessible," the callbutton is actually apull to call. And the reason for that is to help redeuce accident call calls or, kids fiddling with it. But in the accessible rooms, or in restrooms where you would have a button close to the floor, something in case you fell. Those are all push
—button. And what happens in the case of a sleeper, you push the button and it typically will light and chime to let you know that you have activated it. As long as it's lit, it's activating the system. In the attendant's room, there's a annunciator panel that lights up with exactly where the room is. There's a tone and a light that comes onto let them know that someone needs assistance. Outside the roomby the
—— on the ceiling, there's a light outside the door and a indicator for the room number, and a indicator that the call button has been pressed. With the idea being that if the attendant is not in their room, where the annunciater panel is, that they or a conductor or someone else that's maybe busy in the car will see that there has been a call made for whatever the purpose is and can respond. So it does have one —— it gives the user feedback, and also has audible and visual indicators in two places for the train crew. I'd like to think thatsomewhere in the future that we're eventually able to, you know, have some wireless device that's on the railroad employee so nomatterwhere they go that, you know, they will get an annunciate
—— annunciation that someone needs assistance. Because in some cases they have two—car to take care of not just one. They could be busy in another car, and someone would have had a situation occur in their adjacent car. So hopefully that
—— adjacent car. Hopefully that will improve going forward. It's pretty good going now. But we tend to think that everybodyneed tohave the appropriate feedback. But there's always that risk that someone calls and just because the attendant is away from that area that they may miss it for an unfortunate period of time. Dennis: Right. We're not going to get into the operational issue, but I think one of the issues was, not knowing whether somebody's actually seen the light and coming. And so, do you push the button again, or do you do things like that? That's part of the reason why in the elevator there's a requirement that you get a response back. But you're right. If nobody's around the respond, you won't get it. I know that
—— as I recall, when the ice train was here, Amtrak was looking at it from Germany, that one of the
—— somebody said that
—— this was years ago, when there were such things; that the conductors wore pager, and that the call button responded
—— alerted them on the pager. We don't have page errs anymore. But virtually everybody's got a cell phone or something, and I'm sure you could send a signal to tell you where it wascoming from.

Blair: I think we're on the verge. Because Amtrak is working on what they call OBIS it's on Board Information System that is a combination of wired andwireless to reach throughout the train. And I think thatwe're on theverge of breaking through what barriers are left to having those kinds of reliable communications between the passengers and the crew wherever they might be on the train. It could be, again, sort of blue sky thinking, that if the attendants are given time off, rest period, they can transfer that responsibility to another attendant, which often they'll do. You know, one will say, it's my mealtime, will you watch my time, that's what they do. They relieve one another. So I think we're at the real edge of, you know, knocking through the last technological barrier to having that kind of seemless communication. Dennis: Okay. Anybody else? Oh, let me mention one thing about
—— again, the comment of the person who said that we should
—— we needed to have this confirmation audible, whatever... mentioned restroom buttons as opposed to flush buttons. And I don't mean flush the toilet. Some people might have trouble, you know, pushing a button that's essentially the top of the button is flush with the housing around it, which is where lots of buttons are. That you needed a button that extends above the field. And I see a couple of questions about that. I'm not sure how to deal with that. Because it is truethat some people might have difficulty pushing a button that's in, flush with the surrounding. On the other hand, you don't want to have buttons that are easily pushed accidentally. So somebody rolling over in bed flips a button. Or somebody who's decided that they want to flush the toilet in the restroom actually hits the call button. And I'm not quite sure how to deal with that issue. One of the issues for, I think, is the size of the button. If you have a small button in a housing that's the same as the button, that's going to be difficult for a lot of people and will take some fine motor control of a finger to push it. One the issues is you need to make sure those buttons are big. Whether they're flush or protruding above the housing, I'm not sure quite how to deal with that. Anybody got thoughts?
»» Dennis, this is Blair. We've pushed that one around a lot. I'll give you the good example is the Acela where we use the mushroom buttons. And they're prettybig. Andwhen youpush them, they light upwith a image of the attendant so you know again that you have summoned somebody. But in our restrooms, we actually put in a handle like a old fashioned at home toilet handle so that themarketing folks of the daywanted it tobemore likewhatpeoplewould expect at home versus you know, pushing a button on a airplane or train. The problem is that people have been conditioned long enough that when they're on a train or a airplane they expect to push a button. So not seeing a button but seeingahandle, theypushed the onlybutton they could and called theattendant. That was universal, everybody was calling the attendant. It was going off in the food service car by the attendant because that's the only person who is always at one place. There's that. Weeventuallywent inandputabigbutton that said "flush" and the problem went away. It's a huge weight. But in conditions where the space say around a toy let is fairly confined and you've got the need for the attendant call button and the flush button, and trying to keep them on the limited wall space that there is, but in close proximity, you run the risk sometimes of
—— something may get activated that you don't want. Either you may flush the toilet, or call the attendant in inadvertently, but I think you made a very good point. Even if we have buttons that are recessed but the target, the size is appropriate for someone who doesn't have finemotor skills, it would be maybe the reasonable compromise, it would probably limit the opportunity to get snagged on the button or hit it by mistake. You still obviously could press against it, maybe and activate it unintentionally, but it would require a little bit more effort for a unintentional call or flush. So —— and if you have folks that are maybe a little bigger and occupy the space better than others, I think having some kind of recess, or flush to the surface could help as well. »» Well, Dennis.Chris: This may be one item that the committee wants to flag as possible research. I'm not sure, the button size and the button projecting, and what type of button. Dennis: Actually Ed Steinfeld may have some information on this. But I'll add a note to that effect, that it needs somebody to look into it for appropriate
—— we also talk about we also need appropriate placement. We want the call button to be close to the toilet, but you don't want it to be on the side that you
—— if you're not on the toilet, but you're in your chair that you can't reach. I also noticed that
—— I just realized that the control, the flush control for the toilet, I don't say it needs to be on the open side. We want to make sure of that. Because we see that in buildings where they put the flush lever on the opposite side, and so when you're in your chair beside the
—— you can't reach the control to flush. So we need to make that in terms ofthe location. It seemstome I've seen —— Idon't knowwhetherthis isAcella or not,but it seem tome I saw some restroom that actuallyhad two callbuttons, one further away so that you could hit it without
—— and in fact, one of them
—— I don't know where I saw it. One of them was low. So if you actually say fell on the floor you could reach it. I don't know whether it's imagining things.
»» No, no, Dennis yourself right. I actually saw it in Europe on a train, I think it was in Sweden. They had one call button reachable from the seated position on the toilet, and then one on a lower, probably about eight inchesfrom the floor. The idea being what you just mentioned, that if somebody is, you know, falling off the toilet or on the floor they can still reach that call button. So yes, they had two in the washroom.

»» I'm thinking of adding that as a note. I'm not sure we want to prescribe it at this point. But I think it's worth looking into. Blair? Blair: Yes, Dennis this is Blair. Yes, we do that in accessible spaces. And we go at it from the stand point of if you fell from wherever you intended to be that you would have the possibility of reaching a call button from the floor without having to reach very high. I think we keep it in the 12 inch range or 10
—inch range, because we didn't want to make it in a range where you bump into it, or the footplate of the wheelchair or tear it off the wall. But it's that idea of I've fallen and I can't get it. And you can reach it. And in some cases like the bedrooms, the newer rooms, it's not just
—— you know, one at a regular level and one near the floor, it's inmultiple places at those levels. Because obviously if it's on one side of the room and you're on the other side of the room, it's useless to you, so we've tried to add those. Dennis: Okay. So I think
—— that would have to
—— I'll have to write that as an exception to the 24
—inch minimum, by basically saying, you can have a additional button that are below, as long as one of them is in that reach range. So I think that's probably an appropriate way to say that.»» Yep. And this is Blair again. For even things like flush controls, where it may just make a lot more sense to have flush buttons you know in a come of places, so depending on the person, the specific person's ability, you know, they can reach the button. You know, if you transfer back and suddenly you realize, oh, the flushbutton is over there,but I'm right here, you know,maybe having
—— Iwould add something that says, that suggestions, you know,multiple button, if appropriate to the design, you know, to maximize flexibility for the users. Dennis: Okay. Blair: I did want to bring up one point, Dennis, on —— I know you like to pick at Amtrak because it's
—— ...Laughter...

—— Amtrak and inner city are... inextricably connected and when the ADA was written, that was the inner city railroad for the country. And since that time we've seen effortsby other companies tohave sort of rail crew situationswhere they may apply car to the back of an Amtrak train or they may run their own train, but in most cases, what we find is from the operating standpoint, a lot of the freight railroads will only deal withAmtrak andAmtrak crews to operate over their railroad. That's not the case in some situations like VRE which is a commuter line, where they have contracts with other operators.But a lot of the sort of you know, smaller operations, Amtrak is the operator from a railroad standpoint, even if they're not the overall company involved. So the tricky part is, as I understand the statutes that put the teeth into theADA, it is an issue of public funding. And it becomes splitting hairs,but Idon't know if
—— I'llusetheexampleof theAmericanOrientExpress I don't know what their accessibility situation was. I'm sure they had some sort of accessibility. But I don't know what they used as guidelines because they were, you know, technically a private company, even though their trains were pulled by Amtrak for a fee, and you know, their crews were paid for. It would take some careful accounting to make sure that, all of that was 100% funded, and therefore not subsidize by public funds. What do you dowith those kinds of situations? Becausepeople are —— they are a common carrier at that point. And it seems that the real drive should be for a common carrier that's in the passenger business versus just Amtrak. I say that not just to share the burden, but to make sure that we do what we're supposed to do, and have you know, appropriate accessibility regardless of who the provider is. Dennis: Right. The statute does talk about private entity, you know, Alaska Railway I guess is a private, and there are state—run railroads and so forth. And some of theseproposedhigh
—speed trainswillbeprivately operated and privately funded. They're still covered by the ADA, it's just that the
——they're not as explicit as what's required. They are required to comply with ADA. They are still required to meet the general accessible to and usable by people with disabilities. And so, it doesn't necessarily specify you shall follow this particular design. When we were writing the original guidelines, like things for high speed rail, we assumed that the cars would look pretty much like Amtrak cars. And so we said, so follow the Amtrak car design standards. Well that turns out not to be that good a deal these days. But we didn't have any examples to turn to. And I think some of this is probably going to be not so much a change in the statute. I don't think the statute needs to be changed so much as FRA needs to give some interpretations. But I think it's pretty clear that those private railroads are covered by the ADA. It's just that they're not as explicit about specifically whether you have to have a restroom in a dining car, or those kind of things. That's where the real difference comes from. I'm going to send the document that I pulled off the web and highlighted to Paul. And he can send it out to the rest of you. And you can see, I've marked in yellow highlighted a number of the provision, and you can see where the statutory requirements come from. Idid that awhileback, and I justdidn't think to put it on this, or we could have had it available to look at. Chris: Yes, I was just with Calvin and there were issues about privateissues, IE like someotherrailroads. BasicallyFRA is lookingatthose issues, it all goes to DOJ, because they are viewed as title three and not Title II. Dennis: Okay. Anythingelseabout controlsandoperatingmechanismsand I'll add some notations and stuff on what we discussed. And then if not, we can go onto the handrails, which is
—— handrail, grab bars is pretty straight forward. I pulled it pretty much directly from the ADA, ABA, Accessibility Standards for Buildings and Facilities. And it simply talks about rounded edges. It doesn't have to be circular. There are circular cross section grab bar, and it tells you what the minimum and maximum is. What we don't have
—— Idon'tthink Iput it inhere
——anywaythenon—circular,there's somedrawings about overall and roughly scare. There's a requirement for clearance between the wall and the grab bar. There's a structural strength requirement. One thing I didn't add in the restroom section we say basically follow the requirements from the building and facilities side. But I don't have anything that says the height. I believe the height is 33 to 36 inches. And we don't have
—— I haven't specified a length for the grab bars in the restroom. And that's a separate issue. Let's look at the issue about the technical requirements for the grab bars and handholds themselves. Anyone have any questions about those provisions? Chris: I would just encourage you all to think about where you want to specify the location. And that really is focused on am track
—— and not reallyfocus on Amtrak, but focus on every lightrail and commuter rail and having you really concentrate on where these items will go overall. Dennis: Yeah, I wasn't
—— I mean, there's been a lot of discussion about that in the circulation subcommittee about things like vertical Stantions in the middle of the walkways and between door, we had a very long discussion on that and that subcommittee. This provision here is just the technical provisionofwhatagrabbarlookslike,not somuchaboutwheretheyarelocated. And so, I figured that since these things are in rooms and spaces that I might as well put this requirement here. The scoping requirement about where you need them and how they meet that will be figured out in some other committees with the exception of the restroom. We probably need tomake a provision about where those grab bars are. The grab bars around the toilet in a building are typically on the side, and in the back. In the back, it has been said that it doesn't meet
—— isn't very useful
——Laughter...

—— I can tell you a story about where it came from. But it basically came from the idea somebody who one the people working on one of the original grab bar was could we have a fold down grab bar on the other side, a lot of questions about the struck strength. It was Ed who said why don't we put one on the barks and the guy said okay. And that was where it came from. My recollection from talking to people who have been doing this research is that back grab bar isn't very useful. It maybe useful in the train where everything is moving. Peoplehave specific ideas about that particular issue and where they
—— I mean, they think
—— I think that there should be a lotmore grab bars in a train than there need to be in a building, because it's moving, and so I don't necessarily want to get to the design of where to put vertical grab bars, and horizontal grab bars except around the water closet. Because I've seen lots of different design, some of which are good and some of which are bad. But my opinion is, the more grab bars is better in the moving train. Questions? Anybody got a comment? »» Blair: I mean we have been adding grab bar, you know, beyond what was required. And it'sbeenmore around the
—— it'sbeenmore addingvertical grab bars that come down within range, but you know, sort of directed at helping folks to steady themselves or to have within more thing to grab as they're transferring or moving about within in the room. I agree with you, I think it makes a lot of sense —— I know when we did the Acela, I told you this story before, we were working with the design consultant who claimed to be the great experts on accessibility. But they were just over 50 miles from home, so they were experts by proclamation. But any way, we said okay, where should we put the railings? And they were trying to read the law, you know, or the rules and sort of minimize it. And I said well, but we've got multiple areas where it makes sense. We'll just put it
—— they wouldn't give me a decision. And we needed to build the mock
—up. So I said well, put the railing around thefront of the sink, and down the little short wall, and then a vertical one that goes up the wall and one behind the water closet all this stuff. When gets here for review, we'll just eliminate the ones that aren't needed. Of course everyone loved them all, we kept them all, to the Chagrin of the designers. I think the Acela restroom railings blend in perfectly. Everyone thought Wow, you've got railings everywhere you could possibly need them. Nothing was deleted. And I think that was a real watershed moment for us to understand, the more you put in there, you put them this carefully, the broader range of folks you're going to assist regardless of their particular situation. Chris: Blare, I can't tell you how often that sink railing has saved me from going on the floor. As well as the vertical grab bar. Blair: Well, good we got something right for a change. Dennis: Yeah, Ithinkwecan'treallygettoomuchintotheweedsoftrying to prescribe better designs and whatever. I know that you can also over do it. When I came to Washington many years ago, I stopped at a motel in Breeze way up in Pennsylvania, it said it was a holiday in that said it was accessible. The both room looked like a jungle Gym it had a grab bar that came out of the wall, hooked to the floor, it was impossible to get between it and the sink counter to get to the toilet. So you can over do it. ...Laughter...Blair: You to remember, I often tell people, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. ...Laughter...

Dennis: Okay, I don't hear any problems with the technical thing about what grab bars are, and their strength and whatnot. And then we've got some notes to add about controls, about single
—level lounge cars, bi
—level lounge cars. And Ithinkwemaybedone. Isthat
——anybodygotanyadditionalthings? Blair: I'll take as an assignment, because there seems to be a lot of
—— there is a lot of overlap here based on Chris's point about handrails in other modes. Let me see if I can put some kind of performance criteria against handrails that would you know, may have a good cross
—over between the rooms and spaces and circulation. And we'll add that in on the circulation side and capture it. Chris: That would be good, Blair. One thing I realize
—— (Low Audio) where do the grab bars, do your grab bars only appear in the "accessible rooms?" Or do they appear in all the sleeper rooms? So, it maybe worthwhile to ponder what the next generation sleepers need to look like. Not what they currently look like today, but in the future, what would it look like. Blair: Chris, that's a very good point. And we are faced with an agingdemographic. And as ——with the babe boomer, as a result, I don't know anyone, anyone regardless of their situation that doesn't benefit from, you know, grab bars and hand rails. I would, Chris, if you have a moment, if you have some thoughts about some of the other modes from a circulation standpoint, or any information that will help me come up with some wording, that would be awesome. I'm thinking about you know, a transit car and what happens between the door and the accessible space, and then you know, projecting into the non—accessible, the ambulatory space, and how do we make sure that there's enough there for everybody. So if you have any thoughts that way, or any specific examples that I could maybe write around, that would be great. Dennis: I would strongly recommend that you look at the handrail configuration in the metro liner
—— Metro 6,000 cars,
—— we don't know what the 7,000 looks like. But they've done, I think a great job of doing all the things of having handrails right inside the door that you can get to, but that go around thewall in such away that somebody, as opposed tohaving the Stantion in the center that Martin wanted to do
—— the argument was that some people needed to get in and out of the car, some people other than wheelchair user, but that's true. But the design of the hand rails that go along thewall inside the 6,000 Metro cars do a good job of giving people a good place to grab onto and to get out of the doorway it's, as opposed to standing with their backs against the wind screen and essentially blocking the door. So, I think oneof the issues
—— I don't think we can sit down and do a design standard, a performance standard would be good. But we also don't want to just try to redesign the grab rail configuration. I think what might be useful in the report is to have a lot of drawings or photographs of configurations that we think the do a pretty good job. Chris: This is again where I would reiterate Paul and Melissa, you guys are our eyes and ears as much as we can get photos and blueprints of cars is that much more helpful for us as we get the rubric for FRA and everybody else. If you have photos and diagrams captioned drawings, we need those. Paul: If you do send us drawings or photos, make sure they're not copyrighted. If they are, we need copy right permissions to use them. »» If I take a photograph on my cell phone and send it to you, that's okay, right? Paul: That's okay.
»» This is Ken, I'm done that for Dennis, on some of the restaurant picture, examples of some restaurants. Paul: Just to clarify, you know, when somebody sends us a photo the first question is, what do we do with it? Can we put it on the web this who owns it? So Igetaphoto fromDennis,he said Itookthisphoto, I know it'sDennis's photo. But if I get a bunch photos, I don't know if someone cut and paste it off the internet or something, et cetera.Chris: Yes, how does that work for public entities, we can use it without a —— (Low Audio) is it public so from a copyright standpoint, it's available to the public. Dennis: I think if it's already on the web, it's public automatically.
»» Not necessarily. Paul: Not necessarily, no. I would say, get in the habit
—— because we're being more and more held to this. When you send us something for use, you to answer the question, who owns it, and do we have permission to use it? So just because it's on the web doesn't mean that we have permission to use it and place it on our website or put it in our final report, et cetera. So, —— think that through. Uwe was a good example. We went back and forth, who owns this? What sort of statement do we need on this document to be able to use the drawings of the Canadian rail vehicles? Dennis: Okay, aside from Blair's assignment, who else want to take on an assignment? I guess we should go for next step, first. What do we need to do? What is the next level that we need to proceed on? We're not going to have a meeting in December. So this is January. What more do we need to deal with? We've dealt with restrooms, sleepers, lounges, dining cars, et cetera. What do we have left, folks? Are we done? Chris: We still have
—— (Low Audio) club cars, you have outdoor/in door
—— I don't know what we call those cars up in Alaska.»» Ken: Chris happens to be with me in the office.

Dennis: Can you speak up a little. Ken: I think that some of this
—— there are definitional issues around is a club car different than a lounge car? But you know, cars that
—— and we may have
—— there will be some drafting stuff, but clearly places where you eat, places where you have sort of a lounge or sitting, eating, that's not sort of rows of seats, so separate from a regular passenger car, and then the sort of observational car issues, whether internal or external, you know, it does need to be a little bit of definition and some degree of standards so that you know, those kinds of spaces are addressed. And you know, it does get a little complicated about you know, is a dome car, a lounge car, or... I don't know, different railroads use different terms, but I think from a regulatory perspective, you know, passenger cars with just sitting rows, there's sort of the mixed
—use loungish cars that have maybe some tables in circle, or small tables and couches, and other sorts of stuff. And then there's cars that are sort of setup for observation, and they couldn't be dome cars, or they could be some of the things like inAlaska thathave sort of, I think just open spaces. I've never been in one, so I've only seen the external. But it's some kind of observation area that may or may not have seating, and probably will need, you know to stay an accessible route. And probably some degree of hand rails and clear paths issues.Dennis: I think those areprobably easiest coveredby saying things like, if you have table seating, you to have accessible table seating space. If you have any kind of seating at all,
—— well, even if it's a standing
—only area, as long as you have space for a wheel chair, you're covered. And anything open to the public passengers as opposed to crew members has to meet requirements, has to be an accessible route, and there has to be space for wheelchairs if there's seats it has to be transfer seat. And I think that covers all of them. I don't think we can necessarily define the nature of all of those things explicitly. Think we need to cover it with a general statement. Ken: Right that might do it. Chris. And I think you might want to give thought to defining a window height or a railing height so that people have proper views. Because it's really conceivable that you could have a space that you could not actually look out. Dennis: Right. I think that's in Blair's purview. But at this point, I know that in some of the older Amtrak car, when they were trying to meet the, you know, number of spacespernumberof carsand so forth,therewere some spaces forwheelchairs rightnextto,orrightbehindthelab,whichdidnothave awindow,andeverybody else had a window. And so, my answer is that, you know, that seat has to have the amenities that you would normally have for any other seat in the car. SoI think that's pretty much again decided at this point in terms of design is you don't put wheelchair spaces against blank walls. And we probably need to say something to that effect somewhere.
»» Right. Chris: Right. I think you want to look at that window Cil height issue. Dennis: I can barely hear you. Chris: I think you want to think about defining the window sill height, and ensuring that you can look out from a observatory area, or from a seated area of from a sitting position. Would you
—— Dennis: ADA'snondiscrimination statute, it seem tome that is the answer is, whatever anybody else get to see you get to see. Blair: I think maybe this will help. We're in the throws of resolving a problem I wasn't even aware of on some of our western cars. The way we have tried to go at accessible spaces and windows is to look at it as
—— because you know, the accessible spaces usually end up by default being at the end of the car. So, you create the potential because of the way the car is built of it just being structurally convenient to not have a window, and that's ridiculous. But it happens, and unfortunately people don't think about it until it too late. What we try to do now is to look at it from the standpoint of if you takethe
—— you're going to have some seats that are going to be in corners with no windows. But whatever the most typical condition is within the car, that you have a choice, if you're ambulatory you have a choice of trying to go and get one of these other seats. That definition of the typical seat with the windowcondition shouldbewhatisprovidedintheaccessible spaceasaminimum. And then the thinking is, well, okay if you have some seats that are in the corner, and they're away from window, well,
——but those are not the accessible spaces. Becausepeoplewho don'tneed accessible spaceshave access and choice about where they sit. People that need the accessible spaces don't. And so the thinking is that, you know, you go at it that way. You take what is the most typical seating condition and that becomes the definition for the window access for the accessible space. And it might be good to have some relation between the defined accessible footprint and the center line of the window. Because obviously depending on how you go into a car, the window may not
—— maybe centered or almost centered on that space, but that could leave you sitting behind a wall, and looking sort of you know, at a angle out of the car. So I can write something up on that. I think it probably belongs in spaces more than circulation. And as logical as it seems, you know, we're looking at proposals for new vehicles and it's
—— you know, the wheelchair space is in a corner, and it's a long ways from a window. You look at that and go, well, that won't work. But you know, it seems obviousonce you've been up against it. But it obviously isn't to everyone that's in the business. Dennis: Okay, let me take a shot about trying to specify something about that. The issues with controls and operating hecks we said they mechanism we said they should be within six inches forward of the center line wheelchair space. Partofthat isbecausewedon't knowwhichwayyou'regoingtobe facing in that space. If I've got
—— if I'm traveling with a friend who's sitting in the transfer, or just anybody who's sitting in that space, the chair that's right next to it, I probably want to face that person. Ontheotherhand, Imaywantto ride,you know, facing forwardor rearward, or whatever, and be in the other direction if I'm not with anybody. So we want to make sure that the
—— which is another reason why you don't put securement devices in there
—— is so that you get to sit whichever direction you want facing. So you don't want to have controls or windows or whatever in such a way that it essentially forces you to sit one way or the other if you want to see out the window or touch the buttons. Are we done? »» I think we covered some good ground today. Chris: Okay.

»» Uwe: When do we have the next meeting, Dennis?»» January 22 is the next subcommittee meeting. »» Yes, January 22 you said? Okay. »» That's correct. Dennis: And the full meeting is in February, right? »» That's correct. Dennis: Then there's some other committee meetings between then. December there is a
—— circulation I think meets
——
»» I think on the 8th. Uwe: Onboard circulation meets December 11th. »» 11th. Okay. Dennis: All right. Thank you all. »» Thank you, Dennis. »» Thank you Dennis. »» Thank you. »» Okay. »» Talk to you later. »» All right, take care. »» Bye, bye. »» Operator, please