Compliance is to be achieved over a 30-year period from 2002, with interim progress requirements of 25%, 55%, 90% and 100% by the end of 2007, 2012, 2017 and 2022 respectively.
There are some significant exceptions to this, such as trains and trams have until 2032 to achieve the last 10% of full compliance.
This means that by the end of 2012 only 55% of public transport has to be accessible by disabled people and it will be 2032 before all public transport is wheelchair friendly!
Currently 100 trams out of 451 in the fleet are low-floor trams accessible by wheelchairs. However, these can only be entered at special platform stops limiting their usefulness. Don't forget that many of these platform stops are on tram lines that don't have low-floor trams. It would appear that there are only low-floor trams on 4 routes (according to http://www.doi.vic.gov.au/DOI/Internet/transport.nsf/AllDocs/E74041B4E64DF676CA256FC6001AEFC6?OpenDocument). Why have special platform stops without low-floor trams - perhaps some genius in the government can explain that but it makes no sense to me whatsoever??
To make matters worse, low-floor trams have specialist maintenance needs, which are only available at 2 of the 8 tram depots meaning "It is difficult to guarantee that any particular service will have a low-floor tram, and for these reasons the approach has been to fully convert tram routes to low-floor operations." (letter from Patrick O'Neil, Chief of Staff, Office of the Minister for Public Transport and the Arts)
However, it will be 2032 before this needs to be completed!
We have lots of money to give to people as tax cuts and to give to private schools but no money for disabled access to public transport?
For example, the 2009-10 State Budget includes a $5 million commitment to speed up the delivery of up to 50 new low-floor trams. This "speeding up the delivery" means that the first of these low-floor trams will begin arriving in 2012/13. If "speeding up" is getting a new tram in 3-4 years I would hate to see the normal speed.
Scotch College is going to get an additional $16 million dollars from the government (http://www.theage.com.au/national/education/private-schools-cash-boost-20090908-fg0r.html) but we have only 5 million dollars to speed up tram deliveries!
And we live in a fair society? How come a couple of thousand students at one of the most expensive schools in Australia that is not lacking in facilities is able to get $16 million dollars and 300,000 people that the government admits have difficulty accessing public transport get a lousy $5 million!
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