Title

Barrier-free public transportation in Japan: the necessity of some fundamental changes

Document Type

Conference Paper

Publication Date

1999

Subject Area

Population - Elderly, Transport accessibility - Access to services, Transport planning - Accessibility planning, Infrastructure - Facilities

Abstract

Barrier-free as applicable for public spaces (especially transportation) covers a vast area, starting from the elimination of steps in domestic dwellings to the level where anyone can tour the world freely! However, the misfortunate fact remains despite the growing share of elderly people in her total population, Japan is among the few developed nations who had not given much priority for barrier-free policies in public transportation, until quite recently. Nevertheless, the present day considerations in this context may hardly be satisfactory, even in the urban metropolis like Tokyo and Osaka. Most researches in this scope have focused on hardware facility provisions, for example [1],[2], emphasizing on detailed design criteria on buildings such as for their components like guard rails and slopes. Unfortunately, most of these design standards have overlooked the vitally important aspect of prioritizing the views of facility users. Therefore, the facilities are in fact non-user friendly in reality. Within this scenario, this preliminary state of the study looks at the hardware and software policies for creating a barrier-free environment in public transportation in Japan. This article is structured as follows: Section 2 reviews some existing studies and problem areas leading to the objective of this study. Sections 3 and 4 respectively gather the details of two surveys conducted to supplement this research. Further, depending on these two surveys we formulate few basic design criteria for a better accessible transportation in Section 5, while the concluding comments are given in Section 6.

Comments

Permission to publish abstract given by AET.