European Railway Review www.europeanrailwayreview.com Volume 18, Issue 5, 2012 Currently, railways have great potential over other modes of transport in meeting sustainability development goals (economic, social and environmental). It is expected that railway capacity would increase at a higher rate than other modes of transport. This would result in a rise in the number of people travelling by rail. Wheelchair users are expected to be part of this population and, taking the UK as an example, are in fact increasingly choosing to travel by rail. According to the UK Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC), disabled railcard journeys in the UK have trebled in the last 15 years. There are now 122,000 railcards in use by people with disabilities, an increase of more than 40,000 in just five years – thanks to the increasingly accessible infrastructure and rolling stock. To improve accessibility, vehicle interiors are now engineered to accommodate a wheelchair occupant. Fixed seats on trains are designed to national and international standards as part of the vehicle dynamic system. By contrast, most wheelchairs are not intended for use as a vehicle seat and have not been designed or tested for crashworthiness. However, currently, there is a push for wheelchair manufacturers to design them to withstand high crash deceleration. In rolling stock, consideration of human factors and ergonomics has led to the development of standards to provide adequate space in the wheelchair area. To be deemed accessible, a railway vehicle should at least accommodate a Approximately 20 years ago, wheelchair users were provided with a legal framework to travel by rail. In the UK, following the passing of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 (now incorporated into the Equality Act of 2010), the Rail Vehicle Accessibility Regulations (RVAR) of 1998 paved the way for wheelchair users to travel by rail in a regulated manner. The RVAR has since been replaced by RVAR 2010 to cover non-interoperable railway connections in the UK. At the EU level, the European standard for the accessibility of heavy rail vehicles, the Technical Specification for Interoperability for Persons with Reduced Mobility (PRM TSI), came into force on 1 July 2008. Following these legal frameworks, a number of regulations and codes of practice have been put in place to provide wheelchair users with greater access to rail. Wheelchair space design in rolling stock to improve occupant crash safety ROLLING STOCK DESIGN SUPPLEMENT 77 Dr. Emmanuel Matsika Research Associate, NewRail – Newcastle Centre for Railway Research Figure 1: A typical open space designated wheelchair space