01128616

Component

Boarding and alighting railway vehicles poses a significant burden for people with limited mobility whether disabled, elderly, traveling with a baby carriage or in other situations. Improving rail vehicle accessibility can help increase railway use and thereby help create a more sustainable and energy efficient transport system. Improving accessibility also benefits rail operators by reducing the time needed for boarding, thus reducing operating costs. This paper describes a competition held in Austria to develop new ideas for improving access to existing passenger rail vehicles. The focus on existing systems is important because rail vehicles and facilities are expensive and have long service lifetimes so simply replacing existing vehicles and facilities would be difficult. Most of the ideas developed in the competition were refinements to existing boarding accessibility systems. These ideas included improved design to make the systems more attractive to use, two-sided lift systems and combining several accessibility features into a single coach. An important project result was increased awareness of the need to improve rail vehicles accessibility by both the competition participants and the general public through competition publicity. The paper summarizes the importance of providing accessibility, presents a framework for boarding assistance systems (BAS), describes the competition and presents conclusions with recommendations for similar competitions.

01120148

09-0938

English

13p

2009

Transportation Research Board 88th Annual Meeting

DVD

Figures; Photos; References (8) ; Tables (1)

Accessibility; Aged; Boarding and alighting; Competition; Mobility; Operating costs; Passenger transportation; Persons with disabilities; Railroad transportation

Passenger rail

Railroads; Vehicles and Equipment; I91: Vehicle Design and Safety

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2009 Paper #09-0938

TRIS, TRB

Jan 30 2009 5:11PM