Paper presented at the ECMT Seminar "Strengthening the Transport Chain"
Gothenberg, Sweden, September 1999
Accessible bus services in a rural environment
Abstract
The Accessible Public Transport in Rural Areas (APTRA) Project was devised
at UCL to investigate ways of addressing users’ needs for public transport
in rural areas. The project is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council (EPSRC) and the approach is to install some public transport
in a remote rural area and observe the ways in which people make use of
the new facility.
It is essential to ensure that this public transport service is fully
accessible and presents as few barriers as possible to potential users,
especially older people and those with difficulties travelling around.
Another key ingredient of the project is to ensure that the needs of the
local people are addressed as far as possible. This requires extensive
consultation with the local communities.
This paper describes the setting up of the project, the issues of consultation,
the design of the vehicle and the resulting service. Some early indications
of how the local communities are using the service are given. The project
has set out to confront several conventional myths about public transport
in rural areas - the routing and scheduling strategy, the publicity, the
type of vehicle etc. - and the paper airs these in the context of current
rural policy.
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