After 24 years, Michael Muehe retired in January from his position as Executive Director of the Cambridge Commission for Persons with Disabilities. In his post, Muehe was a staunch proponent of accessible transportation and worked hard to improve mobility for Cambridge residents. He helped oversee the City's taxi discount coupon program, developed a wheelchair-accessible taxicab program, inspected new taxicabs to ensure compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and trained taxi drivers in working with customers with disabilities. Muehe was also a founding member of Ways2Go, a transportation coordination team whose travel training program was the precursor to the current MBTA travel training. Most recently, he advocated for people with disabilities to have equal access to services provided by companies like Uber and Lyft.

 

Muehe's transportation advocacy predated his tenure with the City, beginning when he was in college in Boston in the early 1980s. At the time, he lived near the green line, which was not accessible to wheelchair-users. "I was tired of getting rained on," he explains, and so began attending meetings of the group that is now called the Access Advisory Committee to the T, or AACT.  Muehe continued his advocacy through the 1980s, participating in a lawsuit brought by the Disability Law Center that led the MBTA to agree that all new buses purchased would be lift-equipped.

 

As he shifts into retirement, Muehe offers two guiding principles to advocates and organizers. First, "nothing about us without us" - when planning a program, make sure people with disabilities are involved and sharing their needs, preferences, and priorities. Second, change does not always happen quickly; we have to be in the fight for the long haul.

 

Please join us in thanking Michael and wishing him a happy retirement!

The Central Transportation Planning Staff (CTPS) offers  technical assistance on transportation issues at no cost to applicants from  member municipalities, which include Greater Boston and many communities within the 495 belt. CTPS has worked with municipalities, Regional Transit Authorities, and Transportation Management Associations, offering research capacity to assist with planning and evaluating potential services. In recent years, CTPS has focused on first and last mile issues, such as working with the Town of Concord to assess pedestrian access from the West Concord train station to nearby employers. For this project, CTPS analyzed local employment data, made suggestions for pedestrian improvements near the train station, recommended wayfinding techniques for a future rail trail, and estimated the cost of an employment shuttle.

 

Member municipalities wishing for assistance with a clearly defined project or small study can  contact CTPS and apply to see if this program would be a good fit. "We try to be as holistic as possible," says Transit Analyst Andy Reker. "We can look at fixed-route service, but also anything else that makes the experience better, such as better or safer access to existing transit."