Document Type

Report

Publication Date

2004

Subject Area

Location - Europe, Location - UK, Mobility - Accessibility (Disability), Mobility - Vision Impairment, Mobility - Wheelchair, Modes of Transport - Bus, Modes of Transport - Train, Modes of Transport - Tram

Abstract

Governments and public transport operators share a common goal to ensure that public transport is accessible to all and that the pedestrian and traffic environments are designed and managed to enable people to reach and use public transport safely and with confidence. Public transport has a key role to play in improving accessibility for all individuals, thereby minimizing social exclusion and enhancing social cohesion. In this pursuit, government and the public transport community must work together to reduce not only physical, but also psychological barriers (cognitive, information, fear, discrimination) to safe and seamless travel in cities. The importance of improving accessibility to transport systems is clear: at any one time, an average of 25% of the population may have a degree of reduced mobility due to a physical or mental disability, impaired sight or hearing, or through having to carry heavy bags or travel with small children. further, physical and sensory disabilities are often related to age and, as is well known, the proportion of the elderly population in western countries is growing and will continue to do so well into the 21st century. The present and future needs of people with reduced mobility cannot be ignored. To do so would be to exacerbate inequality of access to a wide range of facilities and, from the point of view of the transport service providers, to miss out on a substantial sector of the market for public transport. To better ascertain the difficulties involved in improving accessibility to public transport, the ECMY and the UITP together established in 2001 a joint task force on improving access to public transport. This task force examined accessibility initiatives in the transport systems of four cities: Grenoble, Prague, Goteborg and Liverpool, all of which are making progress towards achieving fully accessible public transport. Task force members met with local and transport authorities as well as the public transport operators in these cities to better understand how policies to improve accessibility are made and implemented. Much of the detail contained in this report has been drawn from these visits. When appropriate, the lessons drawn from the four case studies were taken into account in conclusions of this report. The report is organised as follows: Section 2 provides information on the context for improving public transport accessibility in the four cities examined during the study. Section 3 describes specific issues and factors that are important in this endeavour and how they have shaped accessibility in the transport systems of the four cities; and Section 4 closes the report with a concluding discussion.