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AFI Submission on the Review of the Accessible Transport Standards

Published on July 6, 2023

AFI have made a submission to the latest Review of the national DDA Accessible Transport Standards.  In our submission we emphasise access to transport as a human right, a disability right, a public good and a universal obligation by Governments to provide core national infrastructure.  We support submissions by AFDO/NITAN and PWDA and put the view that the Standards framework is not able to deliver accessible public transport which meets the changing needs of Australians for accessible transport.  We also canvass the need for modern standards which address contemporary understandings of transports as an integrated, multi modal experience involving vehicles, pedestrian access and quality surrounding infrastructure.  We also note the need for modern standards which encompass peoples experience of transport within shared zones, emerging vehicle types and policy decisions in areas like climate transition.  We also call on the standards to include air travel and ridesharing and to remove the problematic of school buses.  Finally, we note that poor transport is one of the mainstream accessibility areas putting strain on the NDIS and that the failure of Government to act on feedback from multiple reviews of the transport standards corrodes faith in the Standards themselves as well as the Australian Governments capacity to undertake meaningful consultation on Disability Rights.   We call for compliance-based standards and/or regulatory approaches to rapidly transition to universally accessible public transport