D.2.1 Report on Good Practice Examples of Accessible Public Transport
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Project no.: 44289 Project acronym: PTaccess Project title: Public Transport Systems’ Accessibility for People with Disabilities in Europe Specific Support Action CALL IDENTIFIER: FP6-2005.SSP-5A Priority Area 2.4: Quality of life issues relating to handicapped/disabled people Task 1: Accessibility of public transport systems for people with disabilities Title of Report: D.2.1 Report on good Practice Examples of accessible Public Transport Status: final Start date of project: 1. February 2007 Date of preparation: 8 April 2008 Duration: 24 months Version: 0.1 Prepared by: TUD Quality control by: JMP Dissemination level: PU (public) Project co-funded by the European Commission within the Sixth Framework Programme (2002-2008) Table of Contents 1 Preface............................................................................................................................................................. 5 1.1 Introduction and analysis........................................................................................................................ 5 1.2 Conclusions............................................................................................................................................. 7 1.3 How to read this report........................................................................................................................... 8 2 Selected good practice examples and policy guidance.................................................................................... 9 2.1 Overview table ........................................................................................................................................ 9 2.2 Good practice assorted to kind of disability.......................................................................................... 15 2.2.1 People with motor impairment...................................................................................................... 15 2.2.1 People with visual impairment...................................................................................................... 17 2.2.2 People with hearing impairment.................................................................................................... 20 2.2.3 People with cognitive/learning impairment................................................................................... 21 2.3 Good practice assorted to kind of vehicle............................................................................................. 22 2.3.1 City bus ......................................................................................................................................... 22 2.3.2 Regional bus.................................................................................................................................. 24 2.3.3 Tram.............................................................................................................................................. 24 2.3.4 Underground railway..................................................................................................................... 26 2.3.5 Local train ..................................................................................................................................... 27 2.3.6 Long-distance train........................................................................................................................ 28 2.3.7 Other.............................................................................................................................................. 28 2.4 Good practice assorted to kind of approach/measure........................................................................... 29 2.4.1 Engineering/technology approach................................................................................................. 29 2.4.2 Financial support measure............................................................................................................. 31 2.4.3 Organisational/operational support ............................................................................................... 32 2.4.4 Awareness building....................................................................................................................... 34 3 Good practice examples ................................................................................................................................ 36 4 Exclusive transport services for people with disabilities ............................................................................ 109 4.1 Introduction......................................................................................................................................... 109 4.2 Examples of exclusive transport services............................................................................................ 111 page 3/115 1 Preface 1.1 Introduction and analysis The objective of the first report within work package 2 of the PTaccess project is to present comprehensive information about good practice regarding accessibility in European public transport. It is crucial to get a comprehensive overview of current good practice examples in public transport accessibility because this information forms the basis for the development and implementation of more precise, goal-oriented, and generally appropriate measures and regulations in the future. This report on good practice examples of accessible public transport aims to show examples of public transport that are being successfully made accessible. Thus, it will encourage stakeholders to apply similar measures. In order to fulfil this task all “successful approaches” first had to be defined. Within PTaccess this includes approaches that: • support the usage of regular public transport by people with reduced mobility; • are economically feasible (in the long run); and • are accepted (meaning people use it). “Exclusive services” (such as door-to-door transport) which are not open to use by everybody are not considered public transport within this research. Furthermore, these services may serve as an excuse not to make improvements to public transport systems. However, this paper does include examples of exclusive services in an extra chapter, which also explains why such services cannot be classified as good practice examples of public transport. This paper is essentially based on two different groups of contributions. The first is the collection of good practice examples and innovative approaches (regarding the accessibility of public transport for people with disabilities) from different European countries as identified by national experts and interviewees during the interviews within Work Package 1. The second contribution is made of good practice examples obtained through a more extensive Internet search. In WorkPackage 1, interviews with the following three experts were carried out at the national level took place in 25 of the 27 EU Member States (due to the timing of the accession process for Bulgaria and Romania): • an individual of an national organisation representing disabled people; • A representative of a public transport operator; and • A representative of the national government. The national experts within each country were carefully selected and chosen for their public transport accessibility, disability and policy knowledge and experience. Each interviewee was asked to recommend some good practice examples. This approach meant that the different points of view of all relevant stakeholder groups were included, since good practice examples named by public transport operators were often different to those named by disability organisations. All three interviewees in each country were asked to provide good practice examples at the beginning and end of the interview. Combined with the contribution from the interviewer (the national contact), this approach provided at least four examples for each country. page 5 / 115 In addition to the expert interviews, a comprehensive Internet search and analysis of past and ongoing projects was undertaken. This research was carried out mainly by TU Dresden with input from other partners as well. All aspects of good practice solutions and problems within EU public transport accessibility were covered in order to paint a thorough and complete picture. It was expected that the most experienced experts would be aware of the problems and solutions within this important transport field. Although we made sure that the interviewees were skilled experts, and that all efforts were made to receive answers representing a complete picture, it must be noted that the results of the interviews proved — at least within the desired time frame — not to be as broad and successful as expected. The number of completed interviews received by the consortium by the initial mid September 2007 deadline, 33 out of 100, illustrates this fact. This deadline was then extended by three weeks and a further 18 responses were received, bringing the overall total to 51. A third of the countries (n=8) were not able to carry out any interviews with their national experts and some experts could not recommend examples because “good practices are not known”(Belgium/Cyprus). From these observations, we draw the following three conclusions: 1. To receive an appropriate and useable picture of all good practice efforts within the EU in this field, we had to rely much more than expected on the additional Internet research. Consequently, we widened the scope of this work to identify more