Universal Accessibility for Public Transport

Our society has committed itself to providing all citizens with equal opportunity. In this framework, the ability to use public transport can be critical for different purposes such as commuting to work, joining in entertainment activities or buying products and services.

As much as possible, people with different ways of moving (children, young people, the older, people with disabilities, people carrying babies or shopping, pregnant women, etc.) should be granted the same comfort, safety, speed and capacity when using public transport: it means the same dignity. The only way to guarantee this is to ensure that the whole chain of public transport (railways, buses, taxis, planes and supporting infrastructure) in the EU becomes universally accessible; not only accessible for all, but also part of a philosphy of universal design.

Universal design means that there’s no need to use secondary entrances and that we all enter from the main door; that we don’t want to depend on the rest of the passengers for paying or ticketing; we don’t want to wait longer; we don’t want not to be able to use annex services; we want to be able to choose where we sit; whether we travel business or tourist class; even if we want to travel in the smoking wagon (if permitted) or not; be allowed to move inside the mobile and the fixed elements in a safe and not exhausting way; to be able to use our own technical aids or guide dogs…and so the list goes on.

Universal design should not be considered a way of solving a problem. It is also an opportunity to increase the quality, usability and safety of public transport as well as the competitiveness of our industry. The goal of the UNIACCESS project is to promote and support the networking and coordination of research and innovation activities in the field of universal design of accessibility systems for public transport between a comprehensive group of stakeholders (end users, designers and manufacturers, operators, authorities) with a view to achieve quality and equality of access to public transport in the EU.

Experience has shown that accessibility design is a multidisciplinary issue demanding a highly coordinated approach. End-users must not only validate new designs, they must also communicate their needs and assessment of the current situation. Whilst designers and manufacturers must find cost-effective viable solutions, operators must be taken into account so that what works in the laboratory also works in the real setting. Authorities must legislate and regulate, factoring all of this into the mix to achieve maximum effectiveness.

Significant dissemination and society awareness of this work will also be necessary to maximise the benefits of the project.

Project objectives

1. To collect useful state-of-the-art knowledge for designing universal accessibility systems to public transport (taxis, buses and trains) in a way that allows this knowledge to be used and shared (at least in a summarised way) by all stakeholders in accessibility to public transport with a view to favour synergies and better quality.

2. To produce a roadmap of future R&D in universal accessibility to public transport based on:

a. The current situation of accessibility to transport.

b Our vision of future accessibility to transport based on the universal design philosophy.

c. The emerging R&D concepts in this field

d. The technology gaps that separate our current situation from the intended one.

3. To come up with new R&D project proposals that allow us to bridge the existing technology gaps, for example:

a. To come up with promising ideas that allow easier access and more comfort for all.

b. To reduce time wasted during access.

c. To achieve an efficient use of available space.

d. To obtain concepts that can be applied to different train, bus and car types with as few modifications as possible.

e. To maximise reliability so that devices always work properly.

f. To achieve a safe system.

g. To design a transition strategy to establish the new systems.

h. To improve the quality, safety and comfort of public transport.

i. To increase the use of the public transport, therefore decrease the traffic jams.

4. To define an improved collaborative innovation process in accessibility to transport that takes advantage of all the stakeholders involved in the field, principally end-users, operators, authorities, designers and manufacturers.

5. To spread knowledge of universal design among educational institutions, end-users, operators, designers and manufacturers with a view to facilitate the adoption of the new concepts.

Motivation of the project

Transport represents a fundamental tool for European cohesion, therefore it is in the interest of the EU that its citizens, belonging to different cultures, have the opportunity of travelling and, in this way, can interact and get to know one another better. On the other hand, the economic dimension of the EU requires ever-greater levels of trade between different communities. The need to travel within reasonable conditions of time and cost represent a key issue for the development of the European economy.

This project takes its origin in the experience of the consortium in building, operating and using the current disabled accessibility systems for public transport. We have gradually come to the conclusion that something was failing in the current accessibility solutions.

These are the facts:

1. Too often, many accessibility devices are out of order.
2. When a person with mobility impairment tries to travel making several connections (very often inter-modal) he/she frequently finds a discontinuity in accessibility that ruins the whole trip. This often results in people with reduced mobility giving up travelling by public transport, especially across long distances.
3. Specific accessibility measures have usually been designed with a reduced group of users in mind, what we could call people with severe mobility problems. Therefore, extraordinary measures have been applied to ’solve the problem‘, e.g. lifting platforms or access ramps that are operated only on demand.
4. Due to the extra deployment time of current disabled accessibility systems and because of their failures, the use of these systems very often causes anger for drivers and travellers without mobility problems as well as frustration and embarrassment for people with disability. In addition, public transport becomes unpunctual/unpredictable.
5. A large group of people without severe mobility problems often avoid using public transport because it is unsatisfactory in situations of mild mobility problems, such as temporary injuries, carrying shopping bags, carrying babies or children, age effects, etc. This leads people in many cases to use their private cars instead of public transport in general and to use taxis instead of trains or buses.
6. Public transport congestion and discomfort is increased in many cases by narrow, difficult or intricate access devices and routes.
7. Improvements in disabled accessibility are often rejected on the basis of their lack of technical/economical viability.
8. Design for all is gaining more and more importance in fields such as house building, while transport seems to stick to differing access systems.

Our interpretation of the facts:

1. Extraordinary measures are by their own nature more prone to failure, expense, slowness, inefficiency and rejection.
2. Public transport attractiveness is greatly influenced by its perceived comfort, which depends on both physical and psychological factors.
3. Because of points 1 and 2, there is a hidden group of potential public transport users that either do not use it or do it with a variable degree of dissatisfaction.
4. Uncomfortable, difficult or inefficient accessibility to transport cause an increase in traffic congestion.
5. When one looks at recent advances in aspects such as automotive crash safety, one would think that designing and building universal accessibility systems should not be such a difficult problem. For example, current crash safety systems involve many vehicle parts moving in a coordinated way in the event of a crash as well as the consideration of different collision types and the estimation of material deformation in a very short time span. Moreover, all of this must be achieved at a very low cost, which has been possible because of mass production and intensive research. It seems that designing universal accessibility systems should be a simpler, less expensive exercise if it was a standard and if a small percentage of the amount of money spent on crash safety research was invested on universal accessibility research.
6. Our experience in designing, building and using disabled accessibility devices also makes us think that universal accessibility is achievable at low cost and that it offers a lot of advantages for everybody.
7. We cannot say that we have achieved efficient intermodal transport if large groups of citizens are unable to use it or have to suffer significant discomfort to use it.

The necessary work to be done in order to achieve the objective of promoting and supporting the networking and coordination of research and innovation activities in the field of universal design has been divided into four packages.

The first work package is concerned with the review of the state-of-the-art. More than gaining new knowledge, the goal is to establish a basis on which new ideas can be generated and new designs can be developed. This is important for two reasons: first, we must take advantage of existing know-how in order to maximise the benefits of the project; second, we can derive the roadmap of future R&D from an adequate study of existing knowledge in the field and of the existing technology gaps. In addition, know-how must be shared among partners, at least in a summarised way, in order to facilitate the generation of an improved, highly integrated innovation process that uses contributions from all stakeholders in this field (end-users, authorities, operators, designers and manufacturers and the society as a whole). State-of-the-art is being reviewed.

Current accessibility technology facilitates access to public transport to people with disabilities by means of extraordinary measures. The first objective of the second work package is to identify concepts for new accessibility devices that can be used by people with or without mobility problems. These devices must be comfortable, fast and unique, representing a significant improvement in efficiency and attractiveness for all travellers. The concepts mentioned before – together with a clear statement of how we visualise the future of accessibility to transport – will give rise to a list of concepts of high potential and gaps to be bridged, e.g. a roadmap of future R&D. This work package is the core of the innovation and the added value of the project. It is also an important input to the definition of new project proposals in the third work package.

The first objective of the third work package is to define a new improved collaborative innovation process which breaks the communication barriers that prevent us nowadays from taking full advantage of the contributions of all stakeholders to improve accessibility to transport. The second objective is to produce a set of R&D proposals that help to implement the roadmap of future R&D developed in the second work package. These proposals will be detailed enough to be assessed by potential participants with a view to decide their participation in the projects.

The objective of the fourth work package is the dissemination of the results of the project to all the EU agents who can facilitate the adoption of universal accessibility systems to public transport: end-users, authorities, operators, manufacturers and designers, educators and the public in general. Several workshops and an international conference will be arranged whilst guides and training material will be published for operators, end-users, designers and manufacturers.

Project participants

The consortium tries to join representatives from all the stakeholders, including end-users, authorities, operators, research centres, designers and manufacturers. The consortium members can be seen in the table below:

AGE contributes the user requirements of older people in the field of accessibility to transport.

ENIL pursues the goal of achieving independent living conditions for people with disabilities, so the goal of this project can be included within a more general goal. This association will extend its activity in the field of transport by taking part in this project.

COCEMFE contributes the user requirements of people with disabilities in the field of accessibility to transport.

SINTEF contributes its expertise in computer-aided design and prototyping focused on usability and geometrical shape as well as its experience in coordinating complex research projects among many partners.

GIAT-EUVE contributes its expertise in computer-aided design and prototyping focused on engineering as well as its expertise in managing projects of design of technical aids and in managing large thematic networks.

GIAT-FINE contributes its expertise as a successful industrial designer and manufacturer of disabled accessibility devices for both trains and buses.

GIAT-ICAVI contributes its know-how in the range of technical aids in the market, their distribution by governments and the training of end-users to use them as well as the dissemination of information to end-users and governments to optimally select the adequate technical aids taking into account both technical and sociological issues.

CRF contributes its expertise on full automobile and bus design and manufacture with a focus on ergonomic aspects and their compatibility with vehicle functions.

SIEMENS contributes its expertise on railway and subway rolling stock design and manufacturing.

POLIS brings into the project the voice of authorities (primary decision makers) in the field of transport as well as the coordination with other innovation initiatives that they work on.

RATP brings into the project the voice of transport operators.

www.uniaccessproject.org