A study on the accessibility of pedestrian crossing for Filipino wheelchair users in Metro Manila

• Main Authors: Sun, John Luke M., Tumaneng, Patrick Angelo L., Yam, Carlos Antonio Luis C.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2015
• Subjects: People with disabilities > Philippines
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/9531
• Institution: De La Salle University

An accessible route is defined as a continuous path with no obstructions and is available to people with disabilities (Building and Construction Authority, 2013). The lack of access could force persons with disabilities to depend on others. According to Batas Pambansa 344, equal right and opportunities are to be granted to persons with disabilities to enable them to participate in the social life and the development of society. Among the provisions of Batas 344, is the requirement of pedestrian crossings to be accessible to disabled persons. There are 167,000 persons with disabilities in Metro Manila, and 28% of them are mobility-impaired. The National Council on Disability Affairs estimates that 60% of the mobility-impaired persons in Metro Manila require the aid of wheelchairs. This results to approximately 28,056 wheelchair users in Metro Manila. This makes wheelchair users the most frequently disabled users of pedestrian crossings. No uniform set of design standards for pedestrian crossings is being used in providing accessibility to wheelchair users. Different municipalities in Metro Manila have different designs that are accessible for wheelchair users, and some that are not. To limit the scope of the study, the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) was consulted for possible problems that are encountered by wheelchair in pedestrian crossing found in main roads under their sole jurisdiction. According to Engineer Emilio Llavor of the MMDA. Complaints on ramps being too steep, and landing areas having insufficient space have been raised by wheelchair users. Other than design flaws, complaints on the presence of obstruction have been raised as well. To validate the complaints received by the MMDA, a focus group discussion (FGD) on the accessibility of pedestrian crossings was conducted. The participants of the conducted FGDs were all wheelchair users from Tahanang Walang Hagdanan. Majority of pedestrian crossings under the MMDA were found to be in accessible to disabled persons. The goal of this study is to provide a pedestrian crossing design that is accessible to wheelchair users. And experiment was conducted to be able to find the optimal design of pedestrian crossings components that would maximize its accessibility. An experiment run required a wheelchair user to use a prototype pedestrian crossing, with each and every run having different component combinations. After the run is completed, the wheelchair user is then asked to rate the accessibility of the pedestrian crossing using an accessibility measure produced by Bhat. Theses accessibility measures revolve around the three dimensions of accessibility namely: (1) safety (2) comfort and, (3) convenience. After analyzing the results, only safety and comfort were significant in the accessibility of pedestrian crossings to wheelchair users. Design Expert 6 was used to provide the optimal combination of pedestrian crossings components. The optimal design did not include crosswalk design, but since the crosswalk is defined as a part of the pedestrian crossing system, a crosswalk design policy was also created based on observations, and official MMDA pedestrian count surveys.