6.3. Benefit Analysis

6.3.1. Issue of Equity

6.3.2. Changing Technology

6.3.3. Installation Costs

RIAS transmitters need to be installed at locations and the costs vary considerably depending on whether they are planned for new or excising structures.  Furthermore, planning and placement costs depend on the type of building construction and architecture.  Electrical power is needed, and providing that service requires costs to be estimated by electricians and designers on a case-by case basis.    With the wide range of building designs and functions, variations in access to nearby electrical wiring, and a wide range in construction costs, no meaningful costs can be generalized.  

6.3.4. Visually Impaired Population of San Francisco and the Bay Area

Table 6. 1   Vision Impairment in the San Francisco Area

Source: San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind   (July 99 data)

There are many ways to look at benefits for this group using RIAS.   The following table shows the total dollar benefit placed on this kind of information, first by three estimations by the subjects (WTP for daily use, savings for travel assistance, and the subsidy for a single round trip bus fare).   Then two low estimates of 25 cents and 10 cents per day are shown.   These figures are a yearly estimate of this benefit, and all monetary estimates are shown in 1,000’s of dollars.   A later discussion examines the problem of extrapolating the experimental results to the entire population of people who are legally blind (see Section 7.7.1 Subjects ), but no statistics are available to determine how many of this population are, or could be, independent travelers.   These monetary benefits should be considered with that caveat in mind.    

Table 6. 2  Estimated Benefit of RIAS Installation

What does this mean for the City of San Francisco and the entire Bay Area?   The WTP estimate of $5 per day, if applied to those with severe vision impairment, shows a yearly dollar benefit of over 20 million dollars to San Francisco residents and over 134 million dollars for the entire Bay Area.   This benefit, for those with some type of vision limitation, would be over 562 million dollars for the entire Bay Area.

Using the amount subjects said they could save in their actual, direct travel expense for assistance resulted in a dollar benefit for this type of information of almost 14 million dollars a year for San Francisco residents with severe vision restrictions and over 93 million dollars for the Bay Area residents with severe vision restrictions.   If all residents with vision impairments are included, the dollar amount for the entire area is about 390 million.   Even a low benefit estimate of 25 cents a day gives a total yearly benefit of 28 million dollars for all vision-impaired residents of the entire area.  The benefits estimated by individuals for less travel assistance did not include a benefit from the reduction of paratransit service use that is sometimes paid by public or private agencies.   In this experiment, subjects clearly stated they would not need to use the expensive paratransit service if the auditory spatial cues and information was widely available.    

6.3.5. Employment, Education, and Government Assistance

With an unemployment rate of at least 70%, financial independence can be a significant problem for this group.   Many of the blind and vision-impaired population are receiving Supplemental Security Income benefits (SSI) and other supplemental income, along with other types of government subsidies.   This research has shown how the lack of access to transit affects activity participation, including job search and travel.   The sample population reported that they could earn on average $8250 more per year if RIAS was installed in their area (the 20 subjects who said that lack of access to transit affected their earnings gave an amount of $12,385).  Some of the subjects were not in the job market, and some had well paying jobs and said that they would save on expenses and make more trips, but that RIAS would not change their income.   For the 20 who did answer this question, it was quite a different story.   Two subjects, who both sold and installed adaptive computer equipment for the blind, explained that they had to devote one day to making a practice trip to a new client’s house in order to be able to ensure that they arrived on time and with ease while carrying the equipment.   These two thought they could almost double their sales income if they did not have to make a preliminary practice trip by using RIAS.   Practice trips can also slow down job search activities for this population.   Since limited access to work and education directly impact low employment for this group, those findings are examined next.

Of the 30 subjects, 17 currently made work trips (see Section 4.3.3 , Activity Participation and Trip Frequencies for further discussion of those data).   One subject was retired, so there were 12 working age subjects who did not make work trips.  After using RIAS, fully 50% of those who did not work said they would make work trips if this kind of spatial information were available.   The findings for education trips were even more robust.   Eight subjects currently made trips for educational activities, leaving 22 people who did not attend any educational functions.   After the field test of these auditory navigation cues, 15 more subjects (68%) reported they would travel to and attend educational activities.

What might this increase in work and education activities mean for reducing public expenditures?  According to the Blindness Alliance For Rehabilitation Change (BARC, 2000, p. 1) , “the unemployment of blind Californians yearly costs government well in excess of $1 billion in cash outlays, Medi-Cal, Section 8 housing and other forms of assistance.”  This figure does not include all the federal aid to this group; people who are disabled and meet minimum income and asset levels are also eligible for federal SSI and Social Security Disability benefits (SSD) payments of up to about $700 per month.  The sample data showed that half of the unemployed said they could work if additional spatial and environmental cues were available.   That estimate would probably not apply to the target populations as a whole, but it extrapolates to a savings of 500 million dollars.   Even if a much lower figure of just 10% being able to independently use transit to get to employment is used, that would save the state 100 million dollars a year.

Current state efforts to increase employment for blind people in California are coordinated by the California Department of Rehabilitation.   They provide education, assistive technology, and other services to promote employment.  However, over 83% of closed cases are classed as “homemaker” which means they are not employed.   The Department spends about 25 million dollars a year for blind services, and, over the last five years, they have placed about 300 people a year in “competitive” employment.   Dividing the budget by the number of jobs placed reveals that the state pays $85,000 for each job, with an average weekly starting pay of $353 (BARC, 2000, p. 1) .  

6.3.6. Cost to Equip Bus Fleet In San Francisco

Many transit buses are accessible to people who use wheelchairs, through massive efforts to comply with ADA requirements.   Problems faced by travelers with limited vision trying to identify, find, or transfer buses were discussed earlier (see Sections 2.5.3 and 2.6.3 ) and Table 3.1 shows that these problems are some of the most difficult transit tasks, as rated by the subjects.  This section offers a brief “back-of-the-envelope” estimation of the cost to install RIAS on all San Francisco Muni buses.   Unlike other types of installations, the total installation has a known cost, and therefore is examined here.   Talking Signs^® for buses are available from Luminator, a company that also makes route and destination header signs for transit vehicles.   One RIAS transmitter is used to transmit an infrared beam forward to identify the bus and also to the side to identify the doorway.   The current price for this transmitter was quoted as $1650, without installation, or $2100 with installation, which is the cost used in this example (Luminator, 2002) .

The San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) has 454 diesel buses that carry over 96 million passengers per year and 331 trolley buses that carry almost 81 million passengers (San Francisco Municipal Railway, 2002) .  The estimate that follows calculates the cost of installing a Talking Signs^® transmitter on all of these two vehicle types (diesel and trolley), a total of 785 vehicles that carry almost 177 million passengers per year.   The cost to equip those 785 vehicles would be 1.65 million dollars ($1,648,500).  Using a 15-year useful-like for vehicles yields a yearly cost of   $110,000, which represents 0.029% of their reported operating budget for 1999-2000,  $380.9 million (San Francisco Municipal Railway, 2002) .  Table 6.3 shows the estimated yearly cost divided by population estimates and by ridership numbers.  Because people with severe vision impairments are captive transit users, it would be expected that they actually use transit at a higher percentage than the general populations, many of whom drive cars.   However, for this estimate, equity of use is assumed and the number of riders per year is based on the National Lighthouse estimates of 1.7% of the population having severe vision impairment and 0.45 % being legally blind.   Currently, Talking Signs ^® receivers are available to qualified users in San Francisco at no cost, but it is assumed that other sources would be needed to provide receivers if buses were equipped with RIAS.   Transit providers are best able to estimate the number of blind users that they serve, through information from disability discount applications or transit statistics on discount fare usage, in order to estimate the number of receivers needed. The installation cost and distributions over people and riders were made with information available and further study by transit providers is needed to determine the number of people who would use transit and could benefit from these installations.   The cost is well below that needed to make a vehicle accessible for wheelchair use and compare favorably with current discount programs.    

Table 6. 3 Talking Signs^(R) Installation Cost for San Francisco Muni Buses

 

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