With ramps and handrails, 870 MTC bus shelters are now disabled-friendly

CHENNAI: In an effort to give the disabled access to public transport,

Greater Chennai

Corporation has built ramps and handrails for

wheelchair users

at 870

bus shelters

in the city.

The corporation took upon itself the

disabled-friendly

initiative with a little nudge from members of the public concerned at the plight of what is a disadvantaged minority: It built the ramps and set up the handrails following a public interest litigation that disability rights activist Rajiv Rajan filed in 2005, demanding inclusive public transport.

The PIL set the ball rolling and Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) bus officials identified 870 bus shelters for the initiative. Teams set up to modify the bus stops have completed the work, the officials said.

“We did not select bus shelters where footpaths are discontinuous,” a senior official of the corporation’s bus route roads department said. Few pavements in the city are at a raised level for a continuous stretch with ramps at their start and ending, but these ramps are either broken or have obstructions, he said.

“We have provided ramps wherever the bus shelters are at the same level as the footpath,” the official said. “We now have only 56 such pavements in Chennai. It will take another five years for the corporation to raise all the footpaths in the city to international standards.”

The ramps link carriageways to bus stops. While this works fine as exits to board buses, if the only entries to the bus shelter are via ramps from the main road, it would be dangerous for wheelchair users to use them, activists said.

People with disabilities have also observed that some handrails are positioned far from the ramps and so are not of any help.

“Even if bus shelters are accessible, are buses ready to take in people with disabilities,” asks disability rights activist Vaishnavi Jayakumar. “MTC and the corporation will have to work in tandem to make public transit accessible to the disabled.”

The corporation and MTC only recently settled a tussle over management of bus shelters. After finding that 500 bus shelters were illegally erected by private operators that MTC appointed to make profits from advertising, the Supreme Court said only the corporation could award contracts for the construction and maintenance of bus shelters.

In 2015, the government formed a steering committee was consisting of officials from the civic body, the state highways department, MTC and Tamil Nadu Road Development Company (TNRDC). The committee decided that a total of 1,390 bus shelters in the city required a revamp — some of them did not even have a roof or seat. The civic body replaced them with steel structures with roofs for cover.