L&T Metro Rail Hyderabad Limited is being designed and executed as a disabled-friendly system.
Special care is being taken to build Metro stations and trains to cater to the needs of people with mobility impairment and those who use wheelchairs, visual, hearing, speech and cognitive impairment.
The stations are designed to provide barrier-free environment for physically challenged. Ramps are provided at the road level of metro stations to facilitate wheelchair movement up to the lifts.
According to Hyderabad metro rail, the metro will provide bigger lifts to accommodate and manoeuvre wheelchairs. These lifts will have hand rail inside for the aid of physically challenged and elderly people.
The height of operating buttons in lifts, fare gates, Ticket Vending Machines (TVM) are designed in such a way to enable access for the physically challenged. The lift operating buttons will have information in Braille at all levels of the stations to help blind persons.
The metro will provide a tactile strip throughout the stations from street level right up to the edge of the platform so that blind persons can get into the train on their own by tapping the floor with walking stick.
The gap between the platform and train floor will be maintained in such a way that wheelchairs can easily get into the trains. This will ensure that the visually impaired people do not get their feet accidentally trapped in the gap between the platform and the train door.
It is proposed to provide specially designated wheelchair spaces in the metro trains to lock the wheelchairs to a special ‘grab hold’ in the train.
Apart from wide automatic fare collection gates for wheelchair passengers, they will have access to special toilet with provisions for physically challenged persons.
Signage is designed with high contrast levels to aid passengers with limited visual capacity and those with cognitive disabilities. Pictograms and signage will facilitate people with disabilities and illiterate people to access stations and trains without anybody’s help.
rishikumar.vundi@thehindu.co.in