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Background Note and Policy Analysis:

Input into June 28-30, 2010 Expert Group Meeting on Accessibility

Washington, DC

By Tom Rickert June 2010

EXPERIENCE

My background includes thirty years of full-time work in the field of accessible transport for persons with disabilities and elders, beginning in 1975 while working as a community organizer in San Francisco, USA, and including 10 years developing San Francisco’s inclusive public transit from 1980-90 as manager of accessible services for the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency. During the past 20 years (1990-present) I have served as Executive Director of Access Exchange International, an NGO with the mission of promoting accessible transportation in countries with emerging economies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. My focus has been on access to bus, rail, door-to-door, and pedestrian modes, with increasing emphasis in more recent years on access to the Bus Rapid Transit systems spreading through major cities in developing regions.

COMMENTS ON THE CURRENT POLICY ENVIRONMENT

Neither policy frameworks nor more than token implementation of accessible public transit services existed in developing countries prior to 1990. This situation has changed markedly. The growing number of countries that have ratified the UNCRPD is only the latest, albeit most important, development in this field. There is reason to hope that the UN Convention will issue out in accelerated progress in most of the wealthier countries and in higher-income areas in other countries that have ratified the Convention.

However, none of this should obscure the fact that most low-income disabled persons in urban areas in developing regions have no access to public transport and that the situation is even worse in rural areas. The yawning gap between policy goals and reality, even in the many countries with emerging economies that have made a good start at the policy level, means that we are in for a long struggle. It may be that many countries that have ratified the UNCRPD do not have any real concept of what implementation will entail, and this may apply especially to transportation services. The few mentions of accessible transportation in the UNCRPD must be brought to bear by local stakeholders on a reality often dominated by largely informal transport providers. These transport providers are typically young men, often without much formal education, struggling to make a go of it by paying a daily fee for their vehicle or putting a down payment on a second hand vehicle, paying off an ad hoc association of drivers, and plying a route where they keep the fares they collect over and above the cost of operating or maintaining their vehicles. As things stand they have little incentive to serve passengers with disabilities. Their vehicles are often unsafe, they often operate on unsafe roads, and they often ply their trades in societies lacking a culture of safety. Those who try to impose regulations, safety standards, or even rudimentary driver training on this situation face a daunting challenge. The situation is made worse by the lack of accessible pedestrian travel modes: persons with disabilities may be forced to walk in vehicular traffic lanes, or to use discontinuous and broken sidewalks often blocked by vendors or parked cars or motorcycle traffic, or to cross at unprotected intersections. In rural areas, navigation may be all but impossible. This

situation would be difficult to change if the objectives of the UNCRPD, or for that matter of the Millenium Development Goals, were to be seen merely as goals to be worked toward in unspecified ways without a clearly defined path toward implementation.

I realize that the above paragraph is a rather grim introduction to our task as it pertains to many countries, but I feel it has the virtue of underlining the need for us to recommend steps that focus on policies that strongly yet realistically promote implementation of accessible transportation and the pedestrian ways to access this transportation.

The UNCRPD will hopefully stimulate policies at national, sub-national, and city or district levels that will issue out in regulations to implement these policies.[1] There are different approaches toward effective policy frameworks.[2]

One approach is to begin with national legislation supplemented by regulations and timelines for implementation (e.g., the USA). This “top down” approach would view the Convention as a document that issues out in legislation at a national level, which then must be carried forward through regulations that implement the legislation by setting norms and specifying benchmarks for carrying out the required activities at local levels. South Africa and Brazil appear to be taking this approach, but with interesting modifications.

There is also a more “bottom up” approach, starting with pilot projects in selected locales (e.g., China, with accessibility projects in 100 cities, or the UK in the past) and then moving in a purposeful manner toward increased regulatory guidance and broader implementation. This approach also has many virtues, as it allows a country to learn from the experience of local implementation and then adapt what has been learned as steps are taken to improve access to pedestrian and transit modes on a larger scale.

With both approaches, the process is one of going from legislation to regulation to work plans, which in turn require project planning, design, construction, maintenance, and staff training. Monitoring technical norms[3] (e.g., by access audits) and enforcement activities are then needed to assure that everything is implemented at each level.

Thus a strong case can be made that policy statements should include a major focus on followup regulatory and implementation activities. A policy statement without funding for local staff to oversee implementation of the policy is often useless.

The UN Convention also opens up possibilities to promote very needed research into low-cost methods to enhance accessibility to pedestrian paths and to bus, mini-bus, and van/taxi transportation in developing countries. Here we need everything from surveys of municipal policies regarding sidewalk construction and maintenance, to pilot projects for building incrementally expanding networks of sidewalks in urban slums, to low cost methods to decrease the distance to the first steps of buses and to improve access at bus stops on unpaved roads. Research in this area has been neglected, and the UNCRPD would appear to mandate a fresh emphasis on such research initiatives, perhaps carried out in countries with emerging economies such as Brazil or India or South Africa.

In the midst of all this, we may wish to consider a focus that goes beyond the immediate world of the UNCRPD to include a larger concern for sustainable and livable cities. In practical terms, the implementation of Bus Rapid Transit corridors with accessible pedestrian infrastructure in dozens of major cities around the world bring all this to a head. A focus is also needed on basic transport in rural areas. Policy initiatives in rural transport in South Africa, France, and Cuba may bear special study, with an emphasis on periodic service on market days or other times to district towns. Both the focus on urban concerns and the focus on rural concerns will involve an interface with many different stakeholders who will potentially benefit from the implementation of the UNCRPD.

PUBLICATIONS

Here are two lists of resources that focus on accessible vehicular and pedestrian transport modes:

1) The Resources Section of the website of Access Exchange International at

(130 annotated resources in various languages)

2) Transport resources on the World Bank website at

Publications to which the writer has contributed include the following (2003-present)

• Editor and publisher, Accessible Transportation Around the World, the semi-annual News- letter of Access Exchange International. 1991-present, available at

• TRickert, The World Bank’s Transit Access Training Toolkit: What to do when there is no trainer. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Mobility and Transport for Elderly and Disabled People (TRANSED), Hong Kong, China, 2010, Hong Kong Society for Rehabilitation.

• TRickert, Transit Access Training Toolkit of the World Bank, 2009. Available in electronic, print or CD versions in English, Spanish, and Portuguese from the World Bank at

• TRickert, Bus Rapid Transit Accessibility in Developing Countries: Recent Developments and Future Trends. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Mobility and Transport for Elderly and Disabled People (TRANSED), Montreal, Canada, 2007, Transport Canada.

• Editor and compiler, Bus Rapid Transit Accessibility Guidelines of the World Bank, 2006, available in English or Spanish at

• TRickert, CVenter, and DMaunder, Access to Small Vehicles in Developing Countries. Proceedings of the 10th TRANSED, Hamamatsu, Japan, 2004.

• CVenter, TRickert, MMashiri, and KdeDeus, Entry into high-floor vehicles using wayside platforms. Proceedings of the 10th TRANSED, Hamamatsu, Japan, 2004.

• CJVenter, JSentinella, TRickert, DMaunder, and AVenkatesh. Enhancing the Mobility of Disabled People: Guidelines for Practitioners (ORN21). TRL Ltd, United Kingdom, 2004

• Making Access Happen: Promoting and Planning Transport for All, a guide for advocates and planners of accessible transportation. AEI, San Francisco: 2003

• Transport for All: What Should We Measure? (Comments on the use of indicators and performance measures for inclusive public transport in developing regions). AEI, San Francisco: 2003

• “Access to Transportation Systems,” in Building an Inclusive Development Community, Mobility International USA, Eugene, Oregon, 2003.

• “Transportation for Persons with Disabilities in Developing Countries,” in International Disability Rights Compendium, Center for International Rehabilitation, Chicago, 2003.

[1]Fortunately, national, regional, and municipal policy frameworks have emerged in the great majority of wealthier nations. Perhaps the most well-known national legislation at a global level is the Americans with Disabilities Act, with regulations found at Similar codes exist elsewhere, and some that come to mind are in the UK ( Canada ( and western Australia ( In Latin America, policy frameworks are found in Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Uruguay, Brazil and several other countries. For example, Brazil has an ambitious policy with a ten-year implementation plan.

[2]See “Setting up a programme for improving access,” Part 2 of Enhancing the mobility of disabled people: Guidelines for practitioners, 2004, 189 pages, published by TRL and DFID in the UK as Overseas Road Note 21. The publication can be downloaded from the Resources Section at

[3]An important compilation of existing technical specifications from fourteen countries is found at the website of the Canadian Human Rights Commission at titled International Best Practices in Universal Design: A Global Review (2006, prepared by Betty Dion Enterprises Ltd.)