Disability and transport - experiences with specialised transport in Norway

The aim of this paper is to discuss important issues related to the mobility of people with some sort of physical or psychological disability, and what kind of public transport services that benefit people with mobility handicaps. The empirical data used in the paper are collected from two national research projects carried out in the period 2000 to 2003 by the Nordland Research Institute. The first project is a study of special adapted public transport services in Norway (AT-services), which are organised as individual taxi-based door-to-door services. The AT-service was established in 1988 with the objective of giving mobility handicapped people the opportunity to participate in local social activities in the same way as their able-bodied peers. The second project focuses on the experiences from a nationwide experimental scheme established in August 2001, with the objective of offering mobility handicapped people door-to-door transport from their homes to either university or places of employment (EW-service). The scheme was initiated with the objective of filling a gap in the existing transport arrangements intended for handicapped people, and to act as an incentive for getting more disabled people to start an education or join the labour market. The data consist of two postal surveys answered by 830 respondents (project one) and 112 respondents (project two). Twenty in-depth interviews with disabled people of different ages, different environments (both rural and urban settlement) and various mobility handicaps were also conducted. A central part of the paper focuses on the handicapped people's benefit of both the AT-service and the EW-service. The personal consequences for mobility handicapped people if the services described above should be phased out or considerably reduced are discussed. The new EW-service is analysed with particular focus on the influence the service has on disabled people's participation on the labour market and consequently the impact on the government's need for payment of disability benefits. Because of the EW-service, they are no longer dependent on being transported to and from work by family or others. Their willingness to pay to use the EW-service rather than be driven by someone else should also be taken into account in an appraisal of the benefits from the EW-service. The design of a fully accessible public transport system, e.g. with low-floor buses, boarding and alighting facilities for wheelchair users together with improvement of bus stops, the walking environment etc., would imply that still more mobility handicapped people will be able to use the ordinary transport system. Both in theory and on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis of an investment in an accessible Norwegian local bus services system, the expected economic and social consequences both for the bus companies, the mobility handicapped people and for society as a whole are discussed. For the covering abstract see ITRD E126595.