This guide provides advice on how transport planners and providers, architects, engineers, builders, certifiers and all levels of government can work together with people with disability to make public transport more accessible.

There are a variety of standards across government and industry that must be complied with in relation to designing and building public infrastructure. This guide asks us to go beyond compliance to deliver better outcomes.

Allen Consulting Group (2009), Review of the Disability Standards for Accessible Public Transport, Canberra: Australian Government.

Audirac, I (2008), Accessing Transit as Universal Design, Journal of Planning Literature 4.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (2015), 2015 Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers—first release. (2015), Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The ‘at the stop’ stage of a public transport journey involves a person's experience at the stop, station or terminal, from their arrival until they board the vehicle or conveyance. During this stage they:

As users, planners, designers, policy makers, certifiers and operators of public transport services and infrastructure, we all have a role to play in creating accessible public transport journeys.

The Transport Standards provide a set of minimum requirements for compliance, but as can be seen in Part 3 of this guide, there is a great deal more to accessibility than just compliance with the standards.

Once people have reached their destination, they usually need to return to their origin. This involves retracing their steps to undertake the return, or journeying on to another location.

People should be able to easily find the start of their return journey by re-tracing their travel path, but this is not always a smooth process, especially for those with accessibility requirements.

The in-vehicle/conveyance stage of a journey involves the passenger's interaction with the vehicle (bus, train, tram, aeroplane or ferry etc.) and potentially its driver. During this stage, the customer boards the vehicle, travels to their destination stop/station and alights.Ideally, the customer is able to board independently, quickly and effectively; have a safe, secure and comfortable experience on board the vehicle; is provided with information during the journey; and alights the vehicle easily at their desired stop/station.

In this part of The Whole Journey, we explore a person's journey across eight key stages.