Transport with Equal Opportunity

Many handicapped people who have to use wheelchairs can now only dream of using city public transportation. Last Tuesday the first step was made toward realizing this dream: a pre-production model of a trolley adjusted to wheelchair users’ needs was presented in Kyiv. The project development was financed by Ukraine’s Ministry of Labor and Social Policy. The new model’s special feature is the floor, which lifts up when the vehicle is moving and sinks lowers to the pavement level when it stops. While for healthy people this detail might seem insignificant, for the disabled and aged this improvement is a small revolution in respect to their urgent needs. Perhaps everybody has witnessed old ladies and gentlemen asking the driver to drive closer to the pavement border so that they could get in or out of the bus or trolley safely. With the new trolley, a person in a wheelchair can do this unaided. All he or she has to do is press a button on the outside of the trolley near its broad middle door. After that, a special ramp slides out (with minimum slope angle). Inside the passenger compartment there is a seat reserved for passengers with special needs, equipped with security belts. Another signal button is placed next to this seat, with the help of which the passenger can warn the driver that he or she is going to get off.

This vehicle was designed by the Pivdenmash experts who have been designing spaceships for many years. The new trolleybus will also provide more comfortable conditions for the driver: the windshield and mirrors broadening the field of vision and an air supply system for the driver’s cab as well as for the passenger compartment. The first order has already been placed for the new production: ten new trolleys will ply Kyiv in the first six months of 2004. The plant’s design bureau also begun work on designing a bus adjusted to passengers with special needs.