Many neurodivergent people find public transport inaccessible. When someone can’t use public transport to get around, it can limit their independence and ability to take part in everyday activities and use essential services. This can harm someone’s wellbeing, mental and physical health, and quality of life. We want to understand more about the challenges neurodivergent people face when using public transport, and how to make public transport more inclusive for neurodivergent people.

Thank you to the Motability Foundation for funding this research.

Explaining the need

Public transport should be accessible to everyone, but many neurodivergent people experience challenges when using transport, so they avoid using it. For others, using public transport is unavoidable, but it can come at a personal cost, such as feeling anxious or cognitive fatigue. If someone can't use public transport in a way that works for them, this can impact their access to healthcare appointments or attend school or work. It can even affect someone’s basic living needs, such as their ability to buy groceries. Public transport is an essential means of accessing social and recreational activities. If public transport isn’t accessible, this can lead to isolation and harm someone’s mental health and wellbeing.

Key aims of the study:

• Understand the current evidence on public transport and neurodivergence.
  
• Identify barriers and challenges neurodivergent people face when using public transport and the gaps between community needs and service provision.
  
• Evaluate the impact of inaccessible public transport on the well-being of neurodivergent people.
  
• Make recommendations about how public transport services can be more inclusive of autistic and fellow neurodivergent people.
  

Key research activities:

• Reviewing existing academic and transport industry research into neurodivergence and public transport use.
  
• Hosting a community consultation to learn from neurodivergent people about the barriers and challenges to accessing and using public transport.
  
• Running a large-scale community-wide survey about their public transport use.
  
• Creating evidence-based guidance for transport providers about how to make their services inclusive and accessible.
  
• Producing a white paper on public transport and neurodivergence that sets out recommendations for future work.

By learning about neurodivergent people’s experiences of public transport, we can know more about the gaps between people’s needs and the current service provision.

We can then make recommendations to help transport services be more inclusive and accessible for neurodivergent people. We can also identify where more research is needed to identify, develop and test supports that may remove the barriers neurodivergent people experience when using public transport.

During this research, we spoke with over 550 neurodivergent community members across five research activities. From these activities, we established four key barriers experienced by neurodivergent people when using public transport:  

• Design and physical infrastructure of vehicles and buildings, including the sensory environment. 
• Information and communication factors, including what information is shared and how. 
• Inconsistency, uncertainty and unpredictability within public transport. 
• The behaviour of others, including other users and the neurodiversity knowledge of transport service staff.  

The impact of these barriers means:

• neurodivergent people are not able to use public transport how and when they want to, and 
  
• neurodivergent people are unable to fully participate in activities at their destination, due to the energy spent navigating the barriers.

From this research, we developed 11 recommendations for change, within five key areas:

• Driving change through collaboration and research 
• Integrate and simplify 
• Maximising digital technology 
• Understanding neurodivergence 
• Less crowded, more support

You can read the full list of 11 recommendations in the report.

[1] Devajyoti, D et al., 2016. ‘Travel Patterns, Needs, and Barriers of Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Report from a Survey’.

[2] Lever, A. G. & Geurts, H. M. (2016) Lever, A. G. & Geurts, H. M. (2016) Psychiatric Co-occurring Symptoms and Disorders in Young, Middle-Aged, and Older Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.