Changes in Transportation for Disabled People: An Economic Analysis

The Accessible Transportation Units in municipalities provides leadership in the development and promotion of strategies and policies that seek to provide accessibility to public transportation without undue obstacles for persons with disabilities, seniors, and other citizens with unique needs. Swedish law regulates the right to access to transportation for everyone that is considered to need special transportation. However cost are rising and municipalities seek to find out systems of transportations that are more efficient that may meet the needs of the disables and reduce cost increase next years. In this paper we evaluate the experience of changes so far in the municipality of Gothenburg, that is the second city of Sweden. We use the perspective of best-practice comparing two different alternative modes of transportation. We have also analyzed the potential for substitution between the two modes because there are some constraints in choice. One is connected with people’s degree of disability combined with residence location and another concerns the propensity to use another type of transportation. The results show a relative high degree of propensity to use the new technology. The degree of general health state appears to be the main reason to explain why some people are more willing to choice new technology transportation then others do. The main results show that in some parts of the municipality new technology is less effective and then more costly that the old one. Planners in the municipality’s transportation system should study either the means of increasing efficiency in some parts of the city, or, if it is not possible to use only one of the technologies in each part of the city. In the last case they should adapt technology to the particular conditions in each zone.