ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the costs and benefits of providing intercity transportation services to disabled persons. It focuses primarily on those unable to board existing intercity buses. The estimates are (necessarily) very broad in range due to the uncertainties in predicting take–up of new services, and thus, results are generally presented for lower and upper bound demands. The market analysis estimates a total Canadian uptake of bus–lift services in the range of 470 to 3,900 disabled travellers per week. For long haul routes, in the bus–lift option, the loss of parcel express revenue can be substantial. Many aspects of the accessible transportation issue cannot be quantified. Some attempt has been made to address these questions in an objective manner. Although not strictly related to intercity bus travel, transfers to and from stations are included for comparison with parallel (door–to–door) service.
