The Scottish Government

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

Introduction

1.1 In January 2005, the Scottish Executive commissioned Atkins to undertake a study into the availability and ownership of the information required by disabled people when planning a journey using public transport. The aim of the study was to improve the current level of service and information offered to people with a disability by Transport Direct and Traveline Scotland. Transport Direct and Traveline are both government supported services which aim to centralise the different sources of travel information needed to make any type of journey.

1.2 The study focused primarily on bus, rail and ferry infrastructure, but had regard to the wider public transport network including taxi provision.

1.3 It was noted that concurrent studies into the availability of accessible taxis ¹ and rail station accessibility were being undertaken by partners such as Transport Direct and First ScotRail ².

Study objectives

1.4 The study objectives included:

• Highlighting the critical pre-travel information required by disabled people;
• Identifying which organisations own the required accessibility information;
• Recommending the most efficient method of collecting this data;
• Identifying gaps in data collection and recommending the best method of surveying interchange points for accessibility information in Scotland;
• Recommending how to maintain this data, where to store it, methods for changing and updating it and who should have responsibility;
• Prioritising a list of data elements available, in order of ease of collection; and
• Explaining how data could be added to existing information systems.

1.5 The study built upon previous research which examined Traveline and Transport Direct's provision for disabled customers, undertaken in 2004 by Transport & Travel Research Ltd ( TTR). After an examination of the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act ( DDA), the TTR study concluded that transport operators and information providers should have the strategic objective of providing journey information of particular importance to disabled people, such as the availability of accessible toilets and staff assistance at public transport stops ³.

Report Structure

1.6 Following this introductory chapter, the study findings are presented in the following chapters:

• Chapter 2: Methodology briefly explains how the study was undertaken and the three key phases of the research;
• Chapter 3: Pre Travel Information outlines the essential features disabled people consider they need information about prior to travelling;
• Chapter 4: Availability of Rail Accessibility Information provides details about how much of the required information is available for the rail network;
• Chapter 5: Availability of Bus Accessibility Information describes how much accessibility information is available for the bus network;;
• Chapter 6: Availability of Ferry Accessibility Information outlines the availability of accessibility information for the Scottish ferry network;
• Chapter 7: Data Collection and Dissemination comprises our understanding of how the required accessibility information could be collected by data owners and gathered together into a single dataset ready for dissemination; and
• Chapter 8: Conclusions and Recommendations sets out the conclusions and recommendations of this study.

1.7 Also included are the following annexes:

• Annex 1 contains a list of the key documents and websites reviewed during our desk top research exercise;
• Annex 2 lists all of the organisations who were contacted during the study;
• Annex 3 contains an example of the National Rail Enquiries station information page; and
• Annex 4 contains an accessibility matrix summarising the missing information by mode and the suggested method of collecting this information for use by the Traveline community.

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