Designing Accessible Transport – Stakeholder Participation

For adopting the most suitable, cost-effective local solution for incorporating universal design, participation of local stakeholders in the designing process is imperative. While every situation is different, here are some recommendations:

• Seek input from the community. Consider organizing community meetings, structured focus groups, and/or universal design audits to gather information on barriers to transport. The inputs should be provided by different types of users including persons with different types of physical, sensory, and cognitive impairments, elderly, caregivers, etc., to identify their travel barriers and help prioritize access features.
• Form an advisory committee consisting of knowledgeable persons with different disabilities to review and assess plans for access to transport systems during the entire planning and implementation process. It will inform the transport officials and planners in order to prioritize actions, avoid costly mistakes, monitor results by testing universal design features, and reporting back on compliance with design and operating standards. Make sure that members of the committee include residents both from the neighborhood served by feeder routes and areas along trunk line corridors due to the different issues faced by users.
• Build cooperative relationships among government agencies. For universally designed transport, routes are important as much as vehicles. However, routes are very often under the control of different administrations. For a disabled person to enter a bus, the pavement is under control of the local authority, the road under control of the Ministry of Public Works and the bus under control of the Ministry of Transport. Encourage these officials to plan together to provide a universally designed travel chain between destinations and transit stops as well as on board vehicles. Or, a separate top-level unit can be set up in a Ministry to assume joint responsibility and exercise authority on all aspects of universal design.

In addition, the possible stakeholders include: representatives from disability organizations; transport providers; social service agencies (assist with key sites); center for universal design.