4 ACCESSIBILITY OF TRANSPORT SERVICES
Let us now concentrate on the physical accessibility of vehicles and
infrastructure. There is often a tendency to regard a transport system
that can be used by someone in a wheelchair as accessible, and one that
cannot as not accessible. Whether the person in a wheelchair can use the
system without assistance is often not defined. This is a gross
over-simplification; impairments can be locomotive (walking
difficulties, wheelchair user), tactile (grasping, holding or touching),
sensory (visual, hearing or speaking problems), cognitive and other
(ECMT, 1986). These impairments limit the abilities of the individual in
some respect, and we all have some physical or mental limitations.
A transport system is accessible to an individual with a set of
impairments if, by good design and appropriate operation, that system
can be used by the individual without the need for the individual to use
any of the functions that their impairment prevents them using. Good
design can reduce the physical requirements involved in using a system
to a level that is possible. For example, a person with impaired ability
to walk and climb may well be able to use a bus if it has low steps,
good handrails and adequate seat space, but be totally unable to use a
bus where the entrance has steep steps and no handrails. A sub-set of
this is that the system is accessible if the individual has assistance
to perform the impaired functions that are necessary for the use of the
system.
The use of a wheelchair enables a person whose ability to walk is
impaired to move about, provided the infrastructure is suitable. In
practice, many people in wheelchairs are able to move further and faster
than people who can walk, but whose walking is impaired by respiratory
or circulatory disease, or by arthritis. But this advantage for the
person in a wheelchair is nullified by a kerb, a flight of stairs or a
patch of muddy ground.
To make a transport system accessible, the designer must know the
functions of the potential users that are impaired, understand what
those impairments prevent the passenger from doing, and design the
system so that to use the system the passenger does not need to do
things that are impossible. Because different people have different
impairments, transport systems need different features to make them
accessible to different groups of users.
Thus, the large group of ambulant disabled people who can walk, but with
difficulty, can climb steps if they are shallow and have good handrails,
and who need handholds to help balance, need vehicles or infrastructure
designed to good standards to be useable. But these standards also make
the vehicles or infrastructure easier and safer for able bodied people
to use. People with impaired vision are helped by good colour contrasts,
the use of bright colours and well-lit signing using large clear letters
or symbols. Again, these features help everybody. People in wheelchairs
need ramps in place of steps or kerbs, good surfaces, lifts for large
height changes. These features can help others, certainly help other
people with wheeled luggage (prams, baby buggies, shopping trolleys) and
can help the more impaired of ambulant disabled people.
Once the design of a system makes it physically accessible to its users,
it is necessary for the system operator to ensure that its users know of
its existence, have the information they need to be able to use it, and
are not prevented from using it by operating practices, rules or some
lack of security that undermines the users’ confidence in the system.
The barriers of information and confidence can be just as great as those
of high steps, steep gradients or long walks.
However much effort is put into making systems accessible, they will
never be useable by the whole population. There will be people who are
housebound or chair- or bed-fast, people with behavioural problems,
people who need constant assistance. It is not realistic to expect mass
transport systems to be useable independently by people so severely
impaired that they cannot leave their house without assistance. What it
is reasonable to expect, and what is becoming the case for new transport
systems, is that people should not be prevented from using a system only
because of deficiencies of physical design or of operating procedures.