(New Zealand Disability Strategy Objective 8: Support quality living in the community for disabled people)

Like non-disabled people, disabled people need to be able to get readily from place to place, within their neighbourhood or beyond, to get things done and to generally participate in their communities.

Many disabled people rely on public transport, so it needs to be readily available to them, and to be easy for them to use. There has been a growing realisation that making public transport more accessible will be to the advantage not only of disabled people, but to people across society: people with temporary injuries or illness, parents with children and buggies, people with limited mobility and even people carrying groceries.

The Ministry of Transport reports that:

• the Public Transport Management Act 2008, which came into force on 1 January 2009, enables regional councils to require that commercial public transport services meet minimum standards in a number of areas, including accessibility
• the New Zealand Transport Agency developed, and published in December 2008, requirements for the accessibility of buses. These come into effect on 1 January 2010 and will apply to all buses, new and used imports, which enter urban services from these dates. While it is expected to be at least 15 years before all buses meet these requirements, some buses are already being built to the specifications.

The following actions, commissioned by the New Zealand Transport Agency, will provide more information about transport needs for future planning:

• the development of a Public Transport Accessibility Audit Tool which will enable regional councils and other bodies to audit the accessibility of public transport: to be completed in early 2010
• the Gisborne Integrated Planning Pilot, which is to quantify the barriers disabled people face in Gisborne in getting access to employment, education, shopping and recreation, following which actions will be identified to address these barriers: September 2009 – March 2010.