Breaking down barriers to public transport

A multi-national project team has been working to increase understanding of mobility and access issues that face disabled people in developing countries and to identify ways to address the challenges raised.

Transport policies in developing countries typically fail to address issues of disabled people's access. Lack of access to transport affects disabled people's lives in ways that reinforce links between disability and poverty, for example, by making it difficult for them to get to schools, colleges, health-care centres or employment opportunities. Over the last three years, the DFID-funded study Enhanced accessibility for people with disabilities in urban areas has been looking at the barriers to accessible transport for disabled people and considering how such obstacles can be overcome.

Phase 1 of the project looked at the mobility needs of disabled people in five case study countries (India, Malawi, Mexico, Mozambique and South Africa), and assessed current practice in Europe, Latin America, Africa and India. It identified three types of barrier to access and mobility: social, psychological and structural.

Major obstacles that participants in the focus groups identified were high transport costs, lack of awareness among transport staff and the general public of the needs of disabled passengers, and structural barriers in the transport system. (See Reference 1 below for further explanation.) The problems and issues associated with each barrier were found to be strikingly similar across the countries in the study and to those in the North.

Phase 2 included the implementation and monitoring of a number of small-scale, low-cost solutions in Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa and India and informing donors of the research activities.

The final output of the research will be a Compendium of Guidelines and Standards, entitled Enhancing the mobility of disabled people: guidelines for practitioners. The drafting of the guidelines - Phase 3 of the project - is partly informed by demonstration projects being undertaken in Mozambique, Malawi, South Africa and India, in which local stakeholders have played a leading role. They are being designed for use by government authorities, advocacy groups, transport operators/ planners and donors. They focus on low-cost, incremental approaches that can be easily implemented where financial resources are constrained.

Figure 1. Barriers to accessibility (Source: Reference 1)
View larger version of diagram

It is anticipated that the guidelines will be available by April 2004 (from TRL or downloadable from www.transport-links.org) . They will also be distributed at the Codatu (Romania) and Transed (Japan) conferences in April and May 2004. The study is being managed and led by TRL Limited, UK, in collaboration with CSIR Transportek, South Africa; the Central Institute of Road Tr ansport, India; the University of Malawi; Access Exchange International, USA; and the Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique. (See www.transport-links.org for more details.)

For further information contact Dave Maunder at TRL
Tel: +44 (0) 1344 770642 E-mail: dmaunder@trlcouk

CSIR Transportek is managing the Disability KaR programme project 'Low-cost technologies for accessible information on public transport'. Contact CSIR Transportek on Tel/Fax: +27 12 841 465

References

1. Mobility in developing countries, Savill T. et al, Municipal Engineer 156, Issue ME2, 2003, ICE.

2. Accessibility for people with disabilities, Transport, Issue 15, November 2002, DFID.