Title

Accessibility and user needs in transport design

Authors

Graeme Evans

Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

2005

Subject Area

Location - UK, Social Issues - social inclusion, Transport planning - Accessibility planning

Abstract

The design of the urban environment in which transport and pedestrian movement is situated, is currently fragmented across design, engineering and planning practice. This journey chain encompasses housing, public space, street and road environments, transport vehicles and infrastructure such as bus stops, ticket machines and information systems. Design territories which include product, graphic, industrial, architectural, landscape and information and communication design, as well as town and transport planning, civil and transport engineering - all with a traditional focus which has not prioritised or involved the eponymous 'user', least of all those excluded from 'safer' journeys (e.g. non-car owners). 'A journey can be seen as a chain of individual products and services whose accessibility is only as strong as its weakest link' (Coleman, 2003: 132). Creative and inclusive approaches which challenge and integrate the design of the journey environment therefore offer an opportunity to bring together design and transport sectors around a common theme. This paper and poster presentation reports on a new research study AUNT-SUE - Accessibility and User Needs in transport - funded as part of the EPSRC's Sustainable Urban Environments (SUE) program. Led by the transport research centre at London Metropolitan University's Cities Institute, with UCL and Loughborough University, testbed authorities L.B. Camden, Hertfordshire County Council, and the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB). The study brings together design, transport and social researchers and practitioners/end-users around the theme of transport, design and social inclusion. This includes research disciplines of human factors and urban design, and community planning incorporating ethnographics, GIS mapping, observational and social survey techniques. This paper has been published with permission from the authors.