Donostia - San Sebastián - AENEAS Measure #2
Adapting Public Transport For Older People
 

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The public transport network in Donostia - San Sebastián

Workshop participants

The timetable of line 5 (click to visit website)

Low floor buses and marked pavement make getting on the bus easy

Background

One of the fears that elderly people face when going onto a bus is the risk of having an accident. Although, normally, people know what they have to do in order to reduce risk, there are some details that sometimes are unknown and other times forgotten. During last years the number of people injured has continuously gone down. Among other measures, taken by the Dbus company, inside the AENEAS project the Donostia-San Sebastián municipality has seen the need of organising these workshops to disseminate how public transport is organised, how older people can take advantage of it and how security can be improved for this group of population. The mobility department of the Donostia-San Sebastián municipality is who organise these workshops with the technical support of the communication department of the Dbus company.


Public transport, always the best way to go

Fifteen workshops are being organised. At the beginning attendance was not limited and we realised that too much people were joining the talks. As a result of that, we decided to restrict to 20 or 25 the number of persons. We think that this is a good figure for this kind of training.

Documentation is prepared by people from DBus. In these documents, a report about lines and timetables is given in order to inform audience what services are available in each area. Attendants learn how to read and how to understand the information provided and the information in each bus stop.

Up to 85 year old people go to these workshops and, normally, they use to be quite good customers of public transport. They usually know pretty well the information given by DBus and the evaluation about bus services uses to be good enough.

On the other hand, they are taught how to behave getting and into the bus. They know the specially prepared facilities in the buses, their rights, and the security measures. This point is particularly important. As it is said before, the main objective of this task is to try to eliminate the risk of accident and the consequent generated fear.
 

Lessons learnt

The data obtained from the enquiries have shown that in most of the cases, public transport is the most common way of transport in this group of people. Their answer about they change of mobility habits are positive. Some of them are a little bit afraid of going by bus, over all due to some bad experiences.

After the workshops, they feel more confident about going by bus. They now how to behave to avoid incidents, they know what to do in case of an unwilling accident and they feel more confident about themselves. From the comments made after the workshop, they think that the drivers have different attitude towards them and this change helps them to give the step ahead.

But the most important characteristics of these workshops are the participation of the people of DonostiaBus. Participants see that in the public transport company there are people who work for their security in the buses.