Accessible Travel Framework Priorities 2024-2026

This final Delivery Plan, and the priorities within it, have been agreed in co-production with our National Transport Accessibility Steering Group the Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland (MACS), and by policy officials from across Transport Scotland and Scottish Government.

The priorities set out here each have a number of activities listed. Many activities are longer term or ongoing and will require monitoring to understand whether progress or continual improvement is being delivered. Other activities are more focussed and may be achieved within a shorter timescale. This activity list will be a “live” list and will be subject to updating and change if new activities arise which are agreed by the steering group.

Currently identified measures of success are listed for each workstream. Work is also underway with workstream five: evidence base and measuring progress to further identify sources of evidence. When these are identified they will be incorporated into the measures of success for each workstream. This work and these activities are key to measuring progress, which needs to be underpinned by SMART outcomes (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound).

Workstream 1: Passenger Experience

This workstream seeks to improve the pre-boarding and on-board experience for disabled passengers across all modes. Improving the passenger experience requires supporting the needs of individuals, recognising these needs can often be intersecting, and includes hidden disabilities.

This is a priority as improving the passenger experience should give confidence and enable disabled people to make more journeys and have more choice. This workstream is split into five sub-workstreams: bus, rail, ferry, aviation, and taxi.

Activities

Bus

  • Analyse whether evidence supports work to promote driver and station staff disability awareness and disability equality training, including lived experience in the development of any training.
  • Work with the Department for Transport and stakeholders to support the Public Service Vehicle Access Regulations (PSVAR) review and understand how the findings of the recent Call for Evidence will be taken forward.
  • Continue to support Bus Users Scotland and look for opportunities to raise their profile and of the services they provide.
  • Identify other priorities for disabled bus users and look for opportunities to incorporate them into Transport Scotland specific programmes.
  • Assess the viability of piloting a passenger assistance service at selected bus stations, with a potential focus on stations recognised as inter modal transport connection hubs.

Rail

  • Future station infrastructure projects will consider accessibility from the outset.
  • Continue support for passenger assistance including both “turn up and go” and advance booking with 1 hour notice for Scotrail services.
  • Complete roll-out of platform ramps.
  • Support and collaborate on the ScotRail rolling stock replacement programme to ensure carriages are accessible and that new carriage designs support level boarding.
  • Work effectively with Network Rail and ScotRail to ensure current and planned projects observe, share progress and promote learning made with accessibility.
  • Develop the feasibility of a pilot project to extend free rail travel for companions accompanying eligible Blind Persons Concessionary Travel cardholders.
  • The Clyde Metro project will embed accessibility considerations from the outset, working collaboratively with a wide range of stakeholders including MACS.

Ferry

  • Continue to improve accessibility on Scotland’s ferry network as well as promoting accessibility throughout all vessel and infrastructure projects in collaboration with respective port owners.
  • Continue to support and promote accessibility in the concessionary travel scheme for island residents.
  • Inform the Islands Connectivity Plan Strategic Approach on relevant accessibility priorities.

View the Islands Connectivity Plan.

Aviation

  • Continue to convene and support the Scottish Airports Accessibility group.

Accessible Taxis

  1. Run a further survey in 2024 on provision of accessible taxis and training provided for licence holders in each Local Authority in Scotland as a follow up to the 2021 survey.
  2. Explore options around accessible transport in rural areas. As part of this, gather data from disabled people with lived experience to learn about specific barriers disabled people face with accessible taxis in rural areas.
  3. Seek opportunities to promote disability awareness training for accessible taxi drivers.

All modes

Measures of Success

  • This workstream will deliver towards all 4 outcomes: outcome 1 (more successful journeys); outcome 2 (disabled people are more involved in the design, development, and improvement of transport policies, services, and infrastructure); outcome 3 (everyone involved in transport will help to enable disabled people to travel) and outcome 4 (disabled people feel safe to use public transport).
  • The remit of Workstream 5 (monitoring and evaluation) includes the ongoing monitoring of delivery under the ATF and will explore appropriate monitoring data. Measures of success that are being explored include a wide variety of indicators. These might include:
  • The numbers of disabled people making journeys and the number of successful journeys.
  • The numbers of people making journeys with assistance.
  • The number of training events and numbers of staff trained in different modes.
  • Attitudes and behaviours of transport staff towards disabled people becoming more positive, evidenced by passenger satisfaction surveys.
  • The number of complaints to Bus Users Scotland (and if these reduce).
  • The number of complaints to Rail Passenger Assist (and if these reduce)
  • The successful introductions of capacity for wheelchair occupancy.
  • Real-time bus location information and “Alert me to my stop” features.
  • Completion of rail accessibility infrastructure projects.
  • Numbers of Thistle Assistance Cards and Sunflower Lanyards and awareness of these by travel operators and improvements to journey experiences of passengers displaying these.
  • Travel hubs which are signed up to Keep Safe.
  • Operators signed up to the Hate Crime charter.

Workstream 2: Journey Planning, Ticketing and Wayfinding

This workstream aims to ensure that digital and non-digital information resources, are fit for purpose so that disabled travellers can make more journeys.

This is a priority as ensuring travel information is accessible and fit for purpose should enable more disabled people to make more successful journeys.

Activities

  • Continue to support and raise awareness of the Accessible Travel Hub hosted by Disability Equality Scotland.
  • Ensure that the interests of disabled people are taken into account, and that accessibility benefits are achieved, during work to develop or update TS-funded digital travel planning applications and resources including Traveline and projects delivered under the Mobility as a Service (MaaS) investment fund.
  • Understand and seek opportunities to reduce the possible impact of the proliferation of travel planning apps for disabled people.
  • Ensure that non-digital resources (such as phone help lines, printed timetables and travel updates) are accessible and available so that anyone who is digitally excluded can still make journeys and has access to information.
  • Ensure that the National Transport Accessibility Steering Group is kept informed on the advice of the National Smart Ticketing Advisory Board and delivery of measures in the Smart, Digital, Integrated Ticketing and Payments Delivery Strategy to improve the accessibility of smart ticketing.
  • Act where relevant, or otherwise monitor action of others, following the findings of the National Smart Ticketing Advisory Board’s advice to improve the accessibility of smart ticketing.
  • Explore options to improve the accessibility of the national concessionary travel scheme, including the provision of a new digital solution in addition to a smartcard.

Measures of Success

  • This workstream will deliver towards outcome 1 (more successful journeys) and outcome 2 (disabled people are involved in design and development of travel services).
  • Measures of success will include:
  • Number of hits to the Accessible Travel Hub.
  • Increased information shared on the Accessible Travel Hub to recognise best practice examples.
  • Evidenced involvement of disabled people in the Traveline refresh.
  • The uptake and use of the Traveline app and website following relaunch including information on the use of increased accessibility options.
  • Feedback on the experience of disabled people using journey planning apps.

Workstream 3: Clear Pathways

This workstream seeks to work towards making paths and pavements clear and accessible for all. We recognise these ambitions as strongly linked to the first and last mile of journeys by more sustainable modes linked to the transport hierarchy and the ambition of reducing car km by 20% by 2030.

View a route map to achieve a 20 per cent reduction in car kilometres by 2030.

It is a priority pathways are usable for all to enable more disabled people to make more successful and safer door to door journeys, and to encourage active travel, and for enabling connections between travel modes.

Activities

  • Publish report on consultation on Inclusive Design for Town Centres and Busy Streets Guidance and engage with working group to determine next steps.
  • Develop and implement a strategy to make existing and planned footpaths and laybys on the trunk road network accessible.
  • Promote Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) best practice across Transport Scotland and beyond. This includes involving “experts by experience” in the impact assessment as the norm.
  • Monitor annual data from local authorities to understand impacts of the pavement parking ban.

Measures of Success

This workstream will deliver towards outcome 1 (more successful journeys) and outcome 2 (disabled people are involved in design and development of travel).

Measures of success will include:

  • Publishing the report on the consultation on Inclusive Design for Town Centres and Busy Streets Guidance.
  • Monitoring the effectiveness of the pavement parking ban via data and information from local authorities. Interpreting qualitative evidence from Disabled People’s Organisations will also be an important source of information.
  • Feeding into the 20% reduction route map, including behavioural change projects.

Workstream 4: Blue Badge

This workstream seeks to ensure there is continuous improvement in the delivery of the Blue Badge policy. The scheme is designed to help disabled people who have severe mobility problems lead independent lives and improve the safety of disabled people who are at risk in traffic.

Transport Scotland is responsible for the national policy and legislation that governs the Blue Badge scheme. However, the day-to-day administration and enforcement is the responsibility of individual local authorities. In 2022, Transport Scotland completed an extensive review and updated local authority guidance to promote consistency in the delivery of the scheme. This included successfully streamlining the processes for those applying under the ‘not for reassessment’ heading and the redesign of all paper application forms.

Activities

  • Work closely with local authorities, independent mobility assessors and healthcare professionals to continuously improve the administration of the Blue Badge scheme and ensure continuity across Scotland.
  • Work with the Department for Transport to improve and streamline the Digital Blue Badge Service for both applicants and Scottish local authorities.
  • Work with Social Security Scotland to understand any implications for Blue Badge as benefits are devolved and transitioned from the Department for Work and Pensions.

Measures of Success

Measures of success will include:

  • An improved digital service, identifying administration improvements through our local authority partners.
  • Establishing a Scottish Independent Mobility Assessors Network to share best practice and ensure assessment consistency across Scotland.
  • This workstream delivers towards outcome 1 (more successful journeys), and outcome 3 (everyone involved in transport will help to enable disabled people to travel).

Workstream 5: Evidence Base and Measuring Progress

This workstream seeks to ensure that baseline data is gathered and understood, and that effective monitoring is in place. Improved data collection will mean it is easier to track progress and improve understanding of travel experience of disabled people. This workstream cuts across and interacts with many of the other workstreams as robust data is essential to understand what progress is being made with the ultimate aim of “reducing the mobility gap.”

Activities

  • Work with Transport Scotland analysts and stakeholders to design and implement baseline data collection.
  • Continue to provide grant funding for DES to support continued outreach through regular polls and online events.
  • Consider and act as appropriate on DES ATF evaluation project recommendations relating to monitoring and evaluation.
  • Establish an annual reporting cycle to report progress to Accessible Travel Delivery Board, the Steering Group, and Ministers.

Measures of Success

Measures of success will be:

  • A robust data set, updated annually, that can be used to track progress.
  • Specifically, this will track a range of indicators including numbers of disabled travellers across different modes, frequency of travel, distance travelled and improvements in journey experiences.
  • Measuring the training delivered to those working in accessible travel, and qualitative data on the experience of disabled people during journeys.
  • This will help to chart progress towards achieving all 4 of the outcomes.

Workstream 6: Transport to Health and Social Care

This workstream seeks to ensure there is support for disabled people to travel safely to appointments. There is ongoing work related to this across Transport Scotland and Scottish Government, which is set out in the Transport to Health Delivery Plan. The Accessible Travel team will keep a watching brief on this work and update the National Transport Accessibility Steering Group on progress made.

Activities

  • To continue to support and engage with Regional Transport Partnerships (RTPs) on policies related to transport to health and to ensure these are reflected in their regional transport strategies.
  • To continue close working between Transport Scotland, Health and Social Care colleagues and MACS to continue to deliver progress around agreed commitments for transport to health.
  • Exploring the feasibility of expansion of Tactran’s MaaS app journey planner specifically developed to help reduce the number of people missing appointments due to insufficient travel information.

Visit NHS Enable.

Measures of Success

  • This workstream will deliver towards outcome 1 (more successful journeys).

Measures of success will include:

  • Having Transport to Health embedded in regional transport strategies.
  • A reduction in numbers of missed appointments due to transport difficulties would also be a measure of success that is aspired to. Further data is required in order to allow this monitoring.

Workstream 7: A successor to the Accessible Travel Framework

The Accessible Travel Framework was set up to span 10 years, so will end towards the end of 2026. While progress has been made and will continue to be made over the next two years we also need to look beyond the end of the Framework in 2026. We need to ensure that change continues to be implemented and there will be an ongoing commitment to improve the travel experience for disabled people across all travel modes. Continuing to take account of the whole journey, including the first and last mile and the connections between travel modes will also be important. It will be important to include concerns, feedback and ideas from as wide a range of disabled people as possible, recognising the diversity within the disabled community.

Activities

  • Collaborate with disabled people’s organisations to produce a project route map by end of 2024.
  • Gather baseline data through a questionnaire survey in 2025.
  • Ensure that any new approaches have a lifespan beyond the current ATF.
  • Ensure that disabled people’s voices and views are included as any successor to the ATF is developed.

Measures of Success

Success will be the co-production of a successor to the Accessible Travel Framework, ensuring that accessible travel continues to be a focus across all travel modes beyond 2026.

Engagement with Disabled People’s Organisations and co-production with as wide a range of disabled people as possible will also be fundamental to the success of setting up a successor to the ATF. This supports our original commitment to “nothing about us without us.”

Effective monitoring from the start of the successor to the Accessible Travel Framework will also be required.