Study on Universal Design of the Bus Safety Zone for the Mobility-Handicapped

Buses and subways are important public transportation modes in the city. Especially, buses are the most common form of public transportation, which people use every day with ease. The share of buses in transportation is bigger than any other transportation mode, not only in the big cities, like Seoul with its subway, but also in many cities without subway service. The results of a 2009 survey on the movement-convenience for the mobility-handicapped reported that the ‘movement-convenience facility suitability’ of bus-stops is merely 25.5% and bus-stops were designated as the facilities which should be improved with higher priority. It is expected that bus-stops will be improved earlier than other movement-convenience facilities. Buses are generally considered as environment-friendly and as a more economical transportation mode than other individual transportation modes and various policies are enacted and implemented for the improvement of bus service. Among them, convenience facilities and convenience services for the bus-stops are increasing such as installation of bus shelters and provision of BIS (Bus Information Systems). However, such improvements are limited to the individual facilities in the bus-stops and there is no comprehensive management and improvement on the bigger zone affected by the stopping of buses. In other words, there is no universal design applied to the affected zone in the multi-use facilities like the bus-stops, which should consider the mobility-handicapped such as children, pregnant women, the old and the weak. Accordingly, this research suggested the set-up of a ‘bus safety zone’ around bus-stops and that the bus-stop facilities would be improved for the safe and convenient use of bus-riders including the mobility-handicapped. The research process included a ‘bus-stop use satisfaction survey” with the bus-riders (including mobility-handicapped) of Hwaseong city in the metropolitan area. The suggested ‘bus safety zone’ universal design is designed to improve the issues drawn from this survey result.