Commission facing rough ride over bus design delay

Date: 15/05/1997

By Leyla Linton

THE European Commission is facing mounting criticism of its failure to settle internal differences over plans to give the disabled greater access to buses and coaches.

Work on new EU-wide standards for coach and bus seating design has been bogged down for months by a dispute between transport and social affairs officials. Both have a role in the process of drawing up the new standards alongside staff in the Directorate-General for industry (DGIII), who are responsible for the drafting the rules.

Social Affairs Commissioner Pádraig Flynn has made his concerns about accessibility for the disabled clear to his colleagues. But officials working for Transport Commissioner Neil Kinnock are worried about the costs involved.

They say the problem centres on the fact that long-distance, low-floor buses have yet to come on the market and wheelchair lifts are very expensive. While the original draft would have made wheelchair lifts mandatory, the current version suggests having either low floors or wheelchair lifts on new vehicles after 1999.

“We want to avoid the impression that this is a mandatory solution. What we are trying to have is a more open-ended formula,” said one official, who stressed that Kinnock was not opposed to the principle of access for disabled passengers.

DGIII officials have also acknowledged that there are technical problems with low floors on buses which would mean reductions in the speed at which they travel.

Industry Commissioner Martin Bangemann had intended to put the proposal to the full Commission weeks ago, but the dispute between Kinnock's and Flynn's directorates-general over seating for the disabled on scheduled intercity buses has held up progress.

A spokesman for Bangemann said the Commissioner was trying to gauge member states' reaction to the plan and hoped it would be adopted by the full Commission within the next few weeks. He said that if there was no progress in resolving the interdepartmental dispute in the next week, Bangemann would consider bringing matters to a head by putting the issue to the vote in the full Commission.

But campaigners fighting on behalf of the disabled are fast losing patience.

British MEP Tom Megahy, who is a member of the executive of the European Parliament's intergroup for disability, said the delay was unacceptable.

“This proposal would make a tremendous difference to disabled people, especially in a world where there is a lot of pressure to use public transport,” he said.