URBAN, INTERURBAN AND SUBURBAN TRANSPORT

Factors contributing to make the urban, interurban and suburban transport on wheels accessible to disabled people can be summarized as follows:

Presence of equipped vehicles for disabled people
Bus stop accessibility
Information on the exact arrival time of equipped vehicles

Now, let’s analyse each one of these factors:

1) Presence of equipped vehicles for disabled people

The vehicles considered in this section are: bus, trolley-bus and tramways.
When equipped for disabled passengers, they have the following characteristics:

Step-free entrance (low floor buses)
Extractable platform to fill the gap between the entrance and the platform
specially allocated wheelchair spaces
Acoustic and visual signals to announce stops

2) Bus stop accessibility

The most frequent problems encountered at bus and tramway stops are the following:

Platform accessibility in order to get on and off the vehicle (often the platform is a “traffic-island” where you need to go up one step)
The gap between the platform and the entrance of the vehicle
Presence of cars in “no parking area” preventing a bus from approaching the platform where the stop is.

3) Information on the exact arrival time of equipped vehicles for disabled people

Most transport operators do not have official schedules of the arrival time of equipped vehicles for disabled people at the different stops. This is due to the fact that every day equipped vehicles are not always used on the same line but they are regularly moved on different lines.
By calling transport operators the day you want to use public transport, it is possible to know how many equipped vehicles are on that line that very day. Only several transport operators can tell you the exact arrival time of equipped vehicles at certain bus stops.
We suggest to contact transport operators in advance because sometimes they can arrange to have an equipped vehicle on a certain line, a certain day and time (this application should be made at least 48 hours in advance)
Generally, vehicles lie within the competence of operators while platforms lie within the competence of the City Council or of the Province; it depends on the line you are using, if urban or suburban.
Transport operators can’t often give information on the accessibility of stops because stops don’t lie within their competence.
When speaking about ATM, the company operating public transport in Milan, it is possible to consult its website www.atm-mi.it/ATM/Muoversi/Servizi in order to know which lines are totally or partially provided with equipped vehicles.
Unluckily, they don’t mention any arrival time of equipped vehicles along the day.
We suggest contacting the call centre in order to have detailed information because data displayed on the internet are not always updated and correct.As far as reductions are concerned, all operators allow using the “Tessera di libera circolazione” (Free circulation card) in the Lombardy Region.