[The handicapped and public transportation]

The article gives an overview of efforts made in various countries (the U.S.A., Canada, Sweden, and the Federal Republic of Germany) toward achieving greater accessibility of their public transportation systems. Various initiatives are shown to have been created in the 70ies on the part of public authorities and public transport providers, that have entailed the development of special vehicles, special information systems and architectural solutions. On analyzing the policies of both the transport providers and the competent public authorities it is, however, found that, although creation of an essentially barrier-free transportation network would be possible from the technical point of view, they refrain from subscribing to this objective. This has resulted in transportation of the disabled being oriented toward special services because these are far less costly than fundementally re-designing existing public transportation systems.