‘STEP-FREE MOBILITY: A PROBLEM WORTH SOLVING’, A COLUMN BY STA CHAIRMAN JOSÉ F. PAPÍ

Stepping on loose flagstones or being raked by head-level barbed wire are our morning stories when we go to work. However, for people with disabilities ordinary travels around European cities are a daunting task. Many wheelchair users end up navigating only a small tranche of familiar local territory as a result, some even confined to a single facility. Some, especially the elderly, have family to help them around obstacles; others have to rely on the unreliable kindness of strangers.

In the Smart City of the Future it will be unacceptable that people with mobility constraints are rarely able leave their home, have incomplete or substandard educations and may never start a family or have meaningful employment.

In this column, featured in Thinking Highways – Issue 2, 2016 (Europe and Rest Of The World), STA Chairman José F. Papí discusses the concept of ‘step-free’ mobility: a new type of urban mobility servicing non-conventional and vulnerable user groups such as the disabled, the elderly, parents carrying baby strollers, pregnant women, travellers with heavy luggage and so on.