The idea of smart cities, driverless cars, and artificial intelligence is propelling us into the unknown. But there are some things we can predict. Everyday things will be seen in a new light. The kerbside for example. Other than kerb ramps most of us don’t think about the kerbside and mobility. But somebody else has.
The Future of Place webpage has a link to a report that looks at the Future Ready Kerbside. The publication by Uber and WSP explores what the future might hold in the context of shared mobility and liveable cities.
The kerb is the intersection between the pedestrian area and the road. How space is allocated each side of the kerb dictates who can access these spaces. The kerbside is not passive infrastructure so we need to prepare for its future use. It needs careful management by city leaders.
There are ten recommendations in the Executive Summary of the report and they include:
-
- Co-design the vision for places in partnership with the community, businesses and governments.
- Move from general parking to pick-up/drop-off for people and goods to improve kerbside productivity and access to local places.
- Take a people-and-place first approach so that new mobility is an enabler and not a detractor to realising the co-designed vision.
- Street design guidelines must get ahead of new mobility and proactively focus on the best possible outcomes for people and places.
- Prioritise walking to access local places, along with transit and
micro-mobility, supported by funding for local infrastructure.
The full report is titled, Place and Mobility: Future Ready Kerbside and has more technical detail. Both the full report and the executive summary have interesting infographics and images depicting how the future might look.
When it comes to accessibility in the built environment, wheelchair users get the most attention. Partly because the access icon looks like a wheelchair user, and partly because built environment standards are based around them. But what about users of other mobility devices? A long ramp might be no problem for a powered wheelchair user. However, walking a long ramp with a wheelie walker, or pushing a wheelchair is another matter. 
Transport planners and engineers are not new to counting pedestrians. But how many of them count the number of pedestrians using a mobility device? This information is very useful in understanding the importance of designing for accessibility. What’s needed is a measuring tool.
A new design guide for accessible inter-city train carriages covers just about everything you need to know. Oregon State University comprehensively researched design options for making passenger trains universally designed. Their findings are reported in
Transportation researchers in Europe are seeking the best solutions for innovative and inclusive mobility. The 
Here’s a call to traffic planners. A 
According to 
One paper that sparked the a lot of interest at the UDHEIT conference is the thorny issue of pedestrians and wheelchair users negotiating those yellow strips of tactile markers. Tactile markers, known as Braille Blocks in Japan, cause problems for wheelchair users, pram pushers, and others with mobility difficulties. Based on research by Yoshito Dobashi in the context of public transportation, the solution seems simple. Create small breaks in the line of tactile blocks to make wheelchair and baby buggy crossing points. These crossing points are now installed in Fukuoka city and in some airports, but not yet on a national scale. Dobashi cautions that, “…improvements need to be made in response to the voices of visually disabled persons who note that the crossing points pose a hazard to them. In his latest study, Dr. Ito of the University of 
Tokyo proposes a new braille block system that incorporates an improved version of braille blocks with wheelchair crossing points upon verifying its feasibility with wheelchair users and baby buggy users. As the press release of this study was published in nationwide newspapers, widespread dissemination can be expected hereafter. It is worth keeping an eye on future developments of this new system.” Good research paper by a man passionate for his topic and keen to find solutions. The title of the paper is, 
The latest article on inclusive travel by Bob McKercher and Simon Darcy presents a range of barriers affecting the ability of people with disability to travel. It is classified into a four tier framework from generic to specific. Below is an excerpt from the abstract explaining more about the four tier framework: