Terminology
Over the last three decades, the use of "paratransit" has evolved and taken on two somewhat separate broad sets of meaning and application.
The more general meaning, as set out above, involved projects starting in the early seventies, documented by the Urban Institute in the 1974 book Para-transit: Neglected options for urban mobility, followed a year later by the first international overview, Paratransit: Survey of International Experience and Prospects. These are still extremely important in many parts of the world.
By the early eighties, particularly in North America, the term began to be used increasingly to describe the second meaning: special transport services for people with disabilities. In this respect, paratransit has become a subsector and business in its own right.
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