Flex routes and individual, authorised paratransit are a separate service type with their own requirements: authorisation, care for vulnerable passengers, confidentiality, documentation and door-to-door service. Here is what distinguishes it from the ordinary accessible route bus.
Introduction
The accessibility article covers the technical: lift, ramp, wheelchair securing and the requirements in UNECE R107. But there is a completely different type of service alongside the scheduled bus — individual, appointed transport, often called flex transport or disability transport. Here you are not driving a fixed route with many passengers, but picking up named, often frail citizens and taking them from door to door. This makes different demands on you as a driver.
Individual disabled transport — a legally established arrangement
Under the Act on transport authorities, the transport authorities must offer individual disability transport to people with severe mobility impairments and to blind and severely visually impaired people aged 18 and over (§ 11). It is a referral-based scheme: the citizen must be approved (referred) to use it, typically because a disability makes it impossible or very difficult to use ordinary public transport. The scheme must cover at least 104 single trips a year as close to the front door as possible, in a suitable vehicle. Trips are booked in reasonable time, and the fare must not be significantly higher than in the transport authority's other services (§ 11(2)-(4)). Referral and the other terms are set by each transport authority.
- 01Target group: people with severe mobility impairments and blind or severely visually impaired people aged 18 and over (§ 11(1)).
- 02Eligibility: the individual must be approved for the scheme before it can be used.
- 03Scope: at least 104 single trips a year (§ 11(2), no. 1).
- 04As close to the front door as possible — not just to a bus stop (§ 11(2), no. 1).
Flex traffic — the coordinated driving
Flex traffic is the collective term for the flexible, booked ride arrangements that traffic companies organise — including individual disabled transport, but also certain patient, doctor and municipal rides. Trips are booked in advance and coordinated so that multiple residents can be gathered in the same vehicle on dynamically laid routes. For the driver it means that the route is not fixed: you drive according to a booking and a route list, pick up and drop off named residents and adapt as you go.
Care for weakened passengers
The great difference from route driving is closeness to the individual. Your passengers are often elderly, ill or severely mobility impaired, and they are dependent on your help — from home, down the stairs, into the vehicle, strapped and safely forward. It requires patience, respect and sufficient time. You must be able to help a passenger with walking difficulty, operate lift and ramp, secure a wheelchair correctly (see the accessibility entry) and be attentive to the passenger's condition during the journey.
- 01Help to and from the door — many citizens need a hand from home to the vehicle and back.
- 02Good time and patience — stress and haste create insecurity in weakened passengers.
- 03Correct fastening — both of the wheelchair and of the person themselves, according to the rules.
- 04Attention to condition — react if a passenger becomes unwell during the journey.
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