Mobility justice and accessible public transport networks for people with intellectual disability

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to advance the debate on transport accessibility. While cognitive barriers to accessibility receive some attention in public transport research and policy, studies focus on discrete services and little research has addressed access solutions focused on the scale of the transport network. To address this gap, this paper presents the results from a one-day focus group with 16 public transport and disability advocacy practitioners in Victoria, Australia. The study reveals three concurrent ongoing developments in Victorian public transport that pose both opportunities and barriers to improving accessibility for people with intellectual disabilities across the extended metropolitan network. They are: diversification of transport services and providers; increased reliance on innovation in communication technology; and the need for inclusive forms of citizen participation mechanisms. The paper builds on the theory of mobility justice to argue that achieving greater transport accessibility requires network-wide, collaborative policies on accessibility. The paper demonstrates that a focus on cognitive access barriers in public transport enriches mobility justice as it highlights the distributed responsibility across a public transport network for the limited mobility of a marginalised group.

KEYWORDS:

• Inclusive public transport
• mobility justice
• intellectual disability
• inclusive decision-making
• performative research

Acknowledgments

The focus group was made possible by funding from the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation via the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne and from Australian Research Council Discovery Project The Disability Inclusive City (DP180102191). The authors thank Barbara Solash, Hillary Johnson and Brett Reynolds of Scope for their presentation to the focus group.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [DP180102191]; University of Melbourne [Seedfunding].