Inclusive Access and Mobility in Developing Countries

Abstract

The travel needs and travel behaviors of the elderly, persons with disabilities, women and children or the transportation disadvantaged in developing countries may be similar to those in the US and other industrialized countries. A review of the literature on accessibility finds that the existing information is disbursed. Data to plan, implement, monitor and evaluate projects does not exist. There are gaps between institutional structures and policies. The most common mode of access for the transportation disadvantaged in urban and rural settings is walking but this mode is disconnected from the household, destination and transportation. In addition, there are many obstacles even in the pedestrian environment for improved access for the transportation disadvantaged. The solutions and interventions used to improve access and mobility (particularly for pedestrians) in industrialized countries could be adapted to developing countries. This paper describes some ways these experiences could be used to solve mobility and accessibility problems for the transportation disadvantaged. The Disability Unit and the Transport and Social Responsibility Thematic Group within the World Bank have started to collect and compile data on mobility and accessibility for the transportation disadvantaged in developing countries. The paper advocates the need to mainstream the pedestrian environment into transport. It also describes an outline for inclusive transport indicators to monitor accessibility and improvements to transportation and especially pedestrian infrastructure which is seen to benefit the elderly and the disabled. These indicators could be used to realize various strategic frameworks that have been proposed.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 5 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.