Better Transport

Low-floor buses help to make buses a good choice for the many people who find it difficult to take a big step up into a vehicle – people in a wheelchair, pushing a pushchair, wearing a leg cast or whose muscles have been weakened by age or illness, for example. Your campaigning can help these people. 

Think about whether there are people you can work with to get low-floor buses. Talk to local groups in your area or Bus Users UK  to find people who can help you. Talk to local groups of people who would benefit from low-floor buses to see if they'll join your fight: older people, people with disabilities and parents with pushchairs, for example.

Look at the Government’s timetable for making buses more accessible. According to  The Public Service Vehicle Accessibility Regulations (PSVAR) 19, all new buses and coaches must comply with accessibility regulations. In a few years, all buses – new or not – must.

• 1 January 2015: All buses weighing up to 7.5 tonnes must be fully accessible
• 1 January 2016: All full-size single deck buses over 7.5 tonnes must be accessible to disabled people
• 1 January 2017: All double deck buses must be accessible to disabled people
• 1 January 2020: All coaches must be fully accessible

Talk to your bus company about its plans to upgrade its buses and whether it is on track to meet the Government’s requirements.

Share good practice. Talk to your transport authority about what it is doing to help meet the Government’s deadlines and to provide accessible buses sooner, as some other councils have done. Many transport authorities that have made an effort to get more low-floor buses:

• All services in Wokingham Borough (about 40) are low-floor except two interurban services and a couple of "Market day only" services. This includes all services by the three main operators Reading Buses, Thames Travel and First.
• Herefordshire County Council has invested over £4 million in converting tendered services to low-floor buses (pdf). Eighty percent of tendered services are operated with low floor buses and the Council also encourages operators to use low floor buses on their commercial services.

In some areas councils improve the bus stops so that they are suitable for low floor buses, while the bus company introduces low floor buses. Talk to your transport authority about whether this is a possibility.

If the stop isn't accessible, there's no point have an accessible bus! Ask your authority what steps it is taking to achieve more accessible services for disabled people. Under the Disability Discrimination Act, it should be trying to make bus stops more accessible.

Be sure to look at our general bus campaigning tips and to use bus facts to support your work.

• Increased reliability
• More priority for buses
  
• Better stations and stops  
• Clearer signage 
• Low-floor buses
• More buses 
• Lower fares