Even more accessible?

In my last blog post, I addressed the accessibility of the city centre of Groningen for disabled people, and the possible lack of accessibility. In this post, I only talked about the accessibility of the city centre of Groningen, but of course there's much more in the suburbs or in the province of Groningen.

In my opinion, accessibility consists not only from the extent to which a place or venue is accessible for disabled people, but also how easily they can get to that place on their own. To measure this kind of accessibility, one has to look at how easy it is to travel to a touristic venue for people with any form of impairment. This means that a lace should be reachable mostly by public transport in order to be accessible, because, for example, places that are only reachable by car, foot or bike are not very much accessible, because it would be a lot harder for disabled people to reach them on their own.

In the province of Groningen, most places are easy to reach by bus or train, especially the more touristic areas. Many touristic areas, like the historical city of Bourtange, are reachable by bus and train, be it easy or be it hard. Busses and trains go from the central station to the suburbs and many towns in the province every half hour on average, and for some places you can take the bus or train from Groningen and get there by transferring to another bus or train along the way. Seems accessible, right?

I think that there still are some problems. Places might be reachable by public transport, but it is likely that getting in and out of the bus or train. This might not be the case for every disabled person, but still might make a lot of places less accessible. 

An overview of all the busses, where they go and where they leave (photo by Reimer Vonk)

The bus station in central Groningen (photo by Reimer Vonk)