Disabled Friendly bus | Fusion - WeRIndia

A new and advanced addition has been added to the transport Auroville, a township in Tamil Nadu. This new addition is to make public transportation more disabled friendly. The project has been made a reality thanks to a woman named Susmita.

She says that the idea is to bring meaning to the word public accessible. She defined it as something that can be accessed by everybody including the elderly, people with some form of disability, mothers with children, pregnant women, people with heavy load, and people without any problems.

This public accessible bus comes under a project called Accessible Auroville. Susmita started this project along with her friends in 2009. The whole idea of the project is to make the entire area more accessible by everyone in terms of mobility.

The project began when Susmita bought a normal bus. She took funding help from one of her friends who happens to be a regular visitor of Auroville. Both Susmita and her friend were concerned about the facilities related to mobility in Auroville. They both discussed on what they should focus first and reached consensus with the bus project.

The bus she bought is a Tata CityRide Marcopolo. It has 12 seats and is worth Rs. 9 lakh. With the bus, Susmita took it to get it customized. She went to Karur district of Tamil Nadu. The customizations started with a double door at the rear of the bus. They installed a lift for wheelchairs at the door which moves into the bus. Few of the seats in the bus were removed so that wheelchair users can fit.

Susmita is proud of the way the bus turned and says that it is the first of its kind in Tamil Nadu. Now, she and her team are working on awareness campaigns about accessible places in Auroville.

Image Reference: TheBetterIndia