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Disabled midibus
Page 6
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PROPOSALS for Britain's first door-to-door dial-a-ride midibus service for disabled passengers are being advanced by Merseyside Passenger Transport Executive.
It intends to use five single-deck vehicles on services in south Liverpool and the city centre from sometime in late 1979.
But MPTE service planning and co-ordination director Samir Rihani says that the vehicles will be built to look like normal service vehicles. "We are most anxious to avoid the impression that the service is operated with welfare coaches or ambulance-like vehicles," he said.
The PTE plans to run the vehicles on low density off-peak services for able-bodied passengers.
No type of vehicle has been announced yet, but it is proposed that the buses should be capable of seating 20 passengers on coach-type seats or 12 on wheelchairs, or a combination of both.
They would be summoned 24 hours in advance to enable economic and acceptable routeing of the buses, but shorter notice would be possible at times.
Mr Rihani added: "It is difficult to estimate the income that would acrue from the experiment and this is one of the reasons why the experiment has been confined to the South Division before implementing a full-scale service throughout Merseyside."
Similar services are already operated in Sweden and the United States.