Why are wheelchair lifts so challenging on motorcoaches?



Making motorcoaches accessible to passengers using wheelchairs is important, but wheelchair lifts are challenging for many reasons beyond the cost.Get more news about bus lift exporter,you can vist our website!

The passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990 made it against federal law to discriminate against people with disabilities. This groundbreaking civil rights law forced many industries, including our own, to rethink how we provide services so everyone can have equal access.

As a result, transit buses switched to low-floor buses so the passenger deck is flush with the height of most curbs and sidewalks to accommodate passengers in wheelchairs. But the solution wasn’t as simple for motorcoaches because they require an additional compartment that city transit buses are not built with: luggage space. Passenger decks on motorcoaches, for the most part, are built on top of the luggage base and sit four to six feet above the ground.

Complicated, expensive equipment
For most motorcoaches in the U.S., the boarding process of an ADA passenger is a complex procedure that requires a significant amount of additional training for the driver to ensure the safety of the passenger and the equipment.

In order for a coach to be able to carry a passenger using a wheelchair, a wheelchair lift must first be installed along with an additional entryway, which must also be cut out of the side of the bus because there’s not enough room for the lift on the main entryway approach.

Here’s a big challenge for motorcoach operators: Unlike city buses, which are paid for with tax dollars, motorcoaches in the U.S. are almost always owned by private companies. A wheelchair lift costs around $40,000, and that doesn’t include the cost of cutting a giant hole on the side of your shiny new bus and mounting an additional service door.

I want all of my buses to have wheelchair lifts! Peoria Charter will have around seven ADA lift-equipped motor coaches in our fleet by the end of the summer. Adding wheelchair lifts to all of our coaches would cost $2 million!

Susceptible to parts failure
Another challenge is maintenance. Wheelchair lifts are very complex. Depending on the make and model of the coach bus, some of these lifts are mounted midship – or in the middle of the coaches, where the luggage bay would normally be. As an alternative, some motorcoaches build these lifts on the rear of the coach.

These lifts are hydraulically powered, with lots of computer chips and circuit boards that control the lifts. Over time, these lifts are subjected to a lot of vibration and temperature and climate variations, which can cause those sensitive computer chips to fail.

From experience, I will say that the rear-mounted lifts deteriorate a lot faster than those that are mounted in the luggage compartment in the middle of the coach. Luggage bays are sealed a bit better and keep the lifts and electronics out of the elements compared to lifts in the rear compartment, which are exposed to salt, moisture, heat and freezing conditions all year round.

Another challenge: These lifts can be extremely quirky and cause a lot of problems if the lift is not on completely level ground. The bottom flap of the lift will just simply not lower, preventing the passenger using the wheelchair from rolling onto the platform. I understand the safety concept of building the lifts that way, but I’m talking about even a slight incline of an entryway of a parking lot or some of those street side dips for drainage. Considering that buses pick up their passengers along the street side 99% of the time, one would think that an engineer would take that into consideration.