About the project
TRIPS stands for “TRansport Innovation for Persons with disabilities needs Satisfaction”. The project aims at making public transport more accessible for persons with disabilities, elderly voyagers and really everyone.
Today, eighty million European citizens face long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairment. The goal of TRIPS is to design, describe and demonstrate practical steps to empower people with mobility challenges to play a central role in the design of inclusive digital mobility solutions.
By ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the EU and all Member States have committed to respect the rights of people with disabilities, including the right to mobility and independent living. In practice however, these rights have not yet been implemented in large parts of the EU and many of today’s transport systems remain inaccessible. As a consequence, people are disabled from accessing job opportunities, education, social and leisure activities and other services. This limits lifestyle choices, reinforces exclusion from local communities, and ultimately blocks people from participating in society as full and independent citizens.
The consortium brings together pan- European networks of users (ENIL), transport organisations (UITP), assistive technology experts (AAATE) and municipalities to engage in open innovation on mobility. They are supported by design methodology experts (TUE), systems integration experts (TB) and privacy experts (TRI).
Building on this expertise, TRIPS will deliver and deploy a Co-design- for-All methodology in 7 pilot cities – Lisbon, Zagreb, Bologna, Cagliari, Brussels, Sofia, Stockholm.
TRIPS will conduct research on needs and attitudes towards future mobility solutions; review the state-of-the-art on accessibility, mobility and related digital and assistive technologies and policies and devise an index to measure mobility.
We will bring together users and transport experts to discuss institutional barriers to adoption, agree innovation priorities and policy changes and co- develop an innovation roadmap and research priorities.
The consortium utilises its international reach to validate outcomes with a wider range of vulnerable-to-exclusion users to ensure that outcomes are relevant to the wider population and transport ecosystem. To achieve this, we reach out to senior citizens and migrant organisations, transport operators, municipalities, assistive technology providers as well as academics and students in design, transport management, and public administration.
In addition, the project will support (a) regional authorities and businesses in designing digital transport solutions that cater for individual needs and (b) support policy-makers in designing appropriate regulatory frameworks and social and educational strategies.
Our team
Our team brings together 7 groups of persons with disabilities located in 7 European cities and 11 institutional partners spread across 10 countries. The local teams work together to design, describe and demonstrate practical steps to empower people with mobility challenges to play a central role in the design of inclusive digital mobility solutions. Our work is guided by the overall aim to make public transport more accessible for people with disabilities and elderly travellers.
The seven cities
Bologna
The Bologna group is made up of 8 people, of which 7 are people with disabilities. Our participation in the European TRIPS project is motivated by the desire to actively participate in the improvement of public transport in the city of Bologna to make it accessible for everyone. We are interested in participating in all the meetings foreseen by the TRIPS project that can lead to a real improvement of our personal autonomy (freedom of movement; right to organise one’s life and travel as everyone else does; equal opportunities). We agree that it is important to establish a dialogue and a shared working method between us and those who make decisions at the city level.
Sofia
The Sofia group is constituted by people with disabilities who are working together to make public transport in Sofia accessible, safe and comfortable. Our efforts are grounded in the present and we are focused on the problems we are facing right now, when using public transport in Sofia. Our starting point is a common problem: bus stops and vehicles are not accessible.
We want to see change happen in Sofia. Creating common ground between persons with disabilities, local authorities and other institutional partners is crucial to turning our vision into something that can be practically achieved.
Brussels
The Brussels group is made up of 8 people with different types of disabilities, including physical (4 people), visual (3 people)and hearing disabilities (1 person). The group actively engages in activities to promote inclusion and mobility for people with disabilities in the city of Brussels, providing advice to municipalities and various projects supported by Belgian non-profit organizations for persons with disabilities. Our participation in the European TRIPS project is motivated by the will to improve the accessibility of Brussels’ public transport by including persons with disabilities in the reflection and decision processes.
Zagreb
We are the Zagreb working group for the TRIPS EU Project. Our core user team group is made of seven people who are working together to develop a digital solution to improve the mobility of persons with disabilities in public transport. Our work is framed within the overarching goal of TRIPS which is to design, describe and demonstrate the practical steps to empower persons with disabilities to play a central role in the design of inclusive digital mobility solutions.
We believe that with a little effort, will, desire and hard work, we can all contribute to making the world a better and more accessible place, so that we can all profit from it. We want to use our experience to contribute to the project, so that we can all enjoy a better society in the future, which will accept differences and make sure that those who are different have equal opportunities. We live in a world where everything is evolving fast and we are here because we want to be a part of that evolution.
This is what we bring to the project:
- A commitment to participate in the project to the end, that is, together as a local team in cooperation with all teams on the project, to reach common solutions that will suit everyone.
- Our experience, but also the collective experience of all members of our associations.
- Our contacts with relevant networks and institutions.
- Our ideas and opinions which are based on our life experience.
Cagliari
We are the Cagliari Co-Users Team. In our group both sensory disability and mobility impairments are represented. Our team is a heterogeneous group in terms of age and background, but we all believe in a constructive exchange of ideas. We consider the TRIPS project a valid opportunity to achieve real change and make the local public transport system more accessible. We would like a city which respects the principle of universal design, with a variety of solutions that coexist and give an answer to the different needs of people with disabilities.
Lisbon
The Lisbon working group for the TRIPS EU project is formed by 15 diabled people, operators and public entities who work together on achieving change and making Lisbon a city where everyone can use public transport without barriers. We aim to co-create solutions to improve infrastructure, vehicles and services, making them more accessible and connected to everyone. More specifically, we are focused on improving the connectivity, real-time information and reliability of the systems and services in use in our city.
We want to see a city where the transport network is more accessible and used by everyone. A city where we can trust the available information, where we can know in advance where we can travel to and where we are confident enough to rely on public transport. A transport network designed in co-production with persons with disabilities to meet our requirements and desires, becoming a welcoming network where people make the difference.
Stockholm
We are a dynamic and growing group of people with a variety of impairments and knowledge on accessibility and public transport. We, who have disabilities, are representing mobility impairment, seeing impairment, cognitive impairment and neuro impairments. We represent several Disabled persons organisations (DPOs) and are joined by different transport stakeholders.
We joined TRIPS to see if we can contribute to an improvement in Stockholm’s public transport and to promote co-production. Together, we are in a process of seeing what can be proposed to improve the Stockholm transport system so it will allow us all to travel in security and to feel a freedom of movement. We want to be as active as possible and for this a good transport system is indispensable. Our vision is a Stockholm transport system for all. A system with flexibility. A public transport for everyone!
Institutional partners
Together with the 7 groups of persons with disabilities described above, the TRIPS consortium is constituted by 11 institutional partners spread across 10 countries. This consortium brings together organisations for disability (ENIL), transport (UITP), accessibility and assistive technologies (AAATE) design (TUE), expertise in strategy and change management (TB), strategic technology development and user-centred design (DLR), as well as policy and regulatory advice on technologies (TRI). In addition, we are working with local partners in the transport ecosystem (ZAGREB, CTM SPA, CARRIS, SRM) to develop and test methods and mobility solution models as well as derive lessons-learned with respect to change management and process innovation in the cities of Bologna, Brussels, Cagliari, Lisbon, Sofia, Stockholm and Zagreb.
