Ensuring universal accessibility and promoting the safe and independent use of public transport for all residents, whatever their physical, mental or sensory profile, is one of EMT Madrid’s prime objectives to which it directs all its efforts. To facilitate the full integration of all members of society it is vital that they should be able to travel from one place to another in the best possible conditions.
Accessibility at bus-stops is an important way of promoting the use of public transport for persons with understanding difficulties or intellectual/cognitive disabilities. This also makes it possible to improve access for users, especially for persons with reduced mobility, and to improve road safety for passengers and pedestrians in the vicinity of bus-stops while improving buses’ avenues of approach in order to ensure that passengers can get on and off buses in appropriate conditions. Among other advances, the accessibility measures that EMT is incorporating into its bus-stop shelters include timetables in Braille, message panels with audio facilities, and tactile paving surfaces (surfaces with a differentiated texture that can warn pedestrians with visual disabilities of any changes in the vicinity).
This initiative, which benefits from EU funding, forms part of the programme of initiatives put in place by EMT Madrid to take the level of universal accessibility to the system to 100%, and is accompanied by initiatives inside its vehicles (such as buses with lower floors and reclining systems, handrails and push-buttons to request stops, enlarged central platforms, and seats reserved for persons with reduced mobility) and enhanced regulations (such as access to buses for persons with guide-dogs).
These improvements to the accessibility of bus-stops will benefit from a maximum of €300,000 in financing from NextGenerationEU funds.