A Study on Barrier-Free Facilities in New Station

Japan has become an aged society. And a lot of disabled people wish to actively participate in society. Hence one of the most important projects for Japan is to improve the infrastructure so elderly and disabled people can lead independent lives. Above all their needs to be improvement in the transportation infrastructure so that people are not inconvenienced; the role of mobility in public transportation systems is very important. Because of this, an accessible public transportation infrastructure, such as buses, railway stations and the like have been promulgated since 17th, May 2000 (Transportation Accessibility Improvement Law). Therefore the construction and improvement of barrier-free facilities in new and existing railway stations needs to be aggressively pursued. Also, railway stations function not only as depots, but also take on other roles. For example, they house various commercial facilities and food shops. Examining the function of railway stations as a place of communication as well as from an accessibility standpoint is important. There are a lot of remarkable studies that focus on the accessibility of railway stations. However, there are no studies which examined the three points below: (1) The local welfare railway station, (2) Examination of the functions of the railway station as a place of communication from an accessibility viewpoint, excluding its train use, (3) Evaluation of barrier-free facilities using the standard of the Transportation Accessibility Improvement Law. Therefore, in this study we focused attention on the handicapped-accessible Shinhiro Station of the JR Kure Line which opened March 23, 2002, located in Hiro-district, Kure city, Hiroshima. We interviewed the administrative staff of both the station and the city and conducted a survey of users. Using the result of the interview we examined the current situation and problems of the welfare railway station, and based on the survey we grasped the current condition of the barrier-free areas of this station and learned what items users of the welfare railway station consider critical. The results in this paper are as follows: (1) The author will propose that a railway station is used in society as place of rehabilitation for disabled people, and I provide examples of the effectiveness and problems of such use. (2) The author discovered that users would rather work on general improvements such as solving the problem of illegal parked bicycles and providing seating on the platform than become a barrier-free facility. (3) I showed the importance of considering broad viewpoints besides those set forth in the Transportation Accessibility Improvement Law for improvement of railway stations.