ITS Monday: Edition 18, 2021

A small collection of curated content from the worlds of intelligent transport systems, smart mobility, and associated areas.

Included this week, AI and congestion prediction, Qld Infrastructure Conference, Women in Transport, EV tax, and carless apartments.

And just in case you hadn’t caught it yet, we have a new series of interviews with transport professionals – Effects of COVID on the transport sector – what they see now, what they would like to happen post-pandemic, and what they think will happen. If you’d like to be join this conversation, drop us a line!

Disability Standards for Accessible Public Transport

Before we get into our regular ITS Monday fare, please find below a request from Erik van Vulpen, Deputy Director, Centre for Technology Infusion at Deakin University.

The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications (DITRDC) is currently reviewing the Disability Standards for Accessible Public Transport 2002 (Transport Standards) and seeks advice about how the Transport Standards should address Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs). This document summarizes barriers that people with disability (PWD) have identified relating to CAV and public transport and could be included in the Transport Standards or Whole Journey Guidelines.

Even if forecasts show a modest 10% penetration of CAV into the market by 2030, manufacturers have already begun building and developing CAVs and operators are already placing orders for shuttles and to a lesser extent Air taxis. The time to start working with the CAV industry on standards and guidelines for accessible public transport is now.

Our review has identified several regulatory opportunities for the Transport Standards. The CAV industry is developing fast and updating the Transport Standards will both improve accessibility for PWD and provide certainty to the industry.

These opportunities are detailed in the main report and include the following:

1. The Transport Standards already apply to CAVs, but CAVs should still be expressly included in order to provide for the unique features of CAV as they relate to the needs of PWD when using public transport.
2. Direct assistance is an important safeguard for PWD when using public transport. Many articles in the Standard include ‘direct assistance’ as a fallback option if the standards cannot otherwise be met, or to overcome hurdles faced by PWD. Assuming there is no human in a CAV throughout the public transport journey, CAVs will need to meet all the standards but cannot rely on direct assistance. In many cases this does not pose a major issue, for example, the design of the CAV Shuttles is more accessible than current buses. However, in addition to the direct assistance responsibilities that are expressly included in the Transport Standards, in practice the driver performs many other tasks that are not captured. How to resolve the problem of having ‘no driver’ in CAVs used for public transport will be a key issue and opportunity.
3. Many opportunities will arise from the fact that all CAVs will be connected. In this regard, CAVs could be the flagbearer for the other modes of transport to follow.

We have concluded that CAV shuttles are in many aspects a step forward in terms of accessibility compared to traditional forms of public transport. Accessibility of flying taxis will be more challenging.

However, our research with PWD has identified a number of opportunities (150 plus, brought down to less than 70) to update the Transport Standards which are summarised in this document.

If you would like to understand the opportunities, Erik van Vulpen invites you to express your interest in a Zoom meeting on the topic – contact Erik by clicking here.

This week’s articles

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