Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-02-13-Speech-2-311"
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"en.20010213.14.2-311"2
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"Mr President, there is much in the text to promote access to buses by disabled people – passenger handrails, non-slip surfaces, standards for wheelchairs and a wide definition of reduced mobility to include all disabled people. However, the key to tonight's debate is Amendment No 8: a guarantee of level access to all new buses in urban areas for persons with reduced mobility. To achieve this requires a boarding aid, a lift or a ramp, because a low-floor bus on its own is not enough. Our failure to agree this crucial part of the text would leave disabled people quite literally falling through the crack, a crack for which we would ourselves be responsible.
The rapporteur – to whom I offer my heartfelt thanks – has forged a compromise which seeks to share responsibility for access between bus manufacturers, operators, local planning and transport authorities. But as we negotiate the final outcome I say to Parliament and the Commission that even a raised kerb at every bus stop can never be the full access solution. Bad parking or obstacles on the pavement can still prevent boarding, whilst a simple manual swing-over ramp, built into the floor of each new bus, is cheap and will work time after time.
Yet nine years after this directive was first discussed, when the disability movement for a generation has put accessible public transport at the heart of its demands, those on the opposite side of the House threaten to vote, not simply against the amendment, but to destroy the whole directive. Do they do so on grounds of cost? No. The study of accessible buses commissioned by my own government shows low operating costs outweighing the marginal extra capital costs, while a 14% increase in passengers brought in extra revenue.
Do they do so because of objections from manufacturers? No. A check today, again in my own Member State, shows that British bus manufacturers and British bus operators are unanimous in their view that they want the directive to go through. Do they do so because of a genuine difficulty at all? No. Because the parliamentary committee that scrutinised these proposals in detail voted for them unanimously.
Mr President, my only conclusion, as we have heard tonight, is that those who oppose do so because they share the prejudice that disability access is an unnecessary technical detail. They are wrong. For a disabled person it means the freedom to travel or the restriction to stay at home. Tonight we have the chance to grant that freedom to vote for accessible public transport. We must and we will."@en1
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