Public transport plays a part in most of our lives at some point in our lives, whether that be to get to and from school, to meet up with friends or go to a job. In his article, Daniel, member of the Somerset Youth Parliament Advisory group, talks about the importance of public transport.
Throughout everyone’s life you will commonly need to travel to places via means of transport – not including walking or running – and today in this article I’m going to be writing about the importance of having these available to you.
For starters, in the UK a high percentage of children (around 50%) live outside of walking distance of schools, and a lot rely on public transport to get to school. Yet due to exterior issues or other unfortunate complications, not everyone is able to access these. Due to this a handful of children find getting to school a difficult task. This can greatly impact their education and willingness to attend school.
A lack of access to public transport can also greatly impact parents lives as well. Quite often parents are forced to take time off work to transport their children to and from school on a regular basis.
Transport is also a significant issue for people with disabilities and accessibility needs due to a wide range of barriers, including physical inaccessibility in stations and on vehicles, unreliability of services, and poor information. As gathered from the web “Many stations, including most train and tube stations, are not accessible, and there are ongoing issues with equipment like manual ramps and lifts. Streets can also be poorly designed or cluttered.” This can affect their access to job opportunities and schooling.
In conclusion, having access to public transport is an extremely useful and effective tool that can be a monumental aid in people’s lives. Albeit what is said is negative, access to transport is becoming much easier and in the present day 99% percent of buses are wheelchair friendly (under the Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations (PSVAR) 2000).
Thank you for reading!
Daniel
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