Carriage of passengers: vehicles comprising more than 8 seats or maximum length 15m (amend. direct. 70/156/EEC)

The Conciliation Committee reached agreement on the text of the directive. Parliament's concern throughout the procedure had been to guarantee full access to public transport for all persons of reduced mobility. The main points of the agreement were as follows: - the manufacture of existing low-floor buses with a gangway slope of 12.5% will be discontinued within a period of 3 years; - better facilities will be provided for passengers of reduced mobility, especially wheelchair users, by technical solutions applied to the vehicle, as covered by the directive; - Parliament managed to secure a broader definition in the directive of "persons of reduced mobility", to include not just the elderly and the disabled but all people who experience some difficulty when using public transport, such as people with sensory and intellectual impairments, wheelchair users, people with limb impairments, people of small stature, people with heavy luggage, pregnant women, people with shopping trolleys, and people with children (including children in pushchairs); - all sloping areas will henceforth be provided with a non-slip surface; - buses in urban transport will be required to have a kneeling system in conjunction with either a ramp or a lift in order to guarantee in all circumstances full access for wheelchair users, in particular where the pavement is not level with the floor of the bus. �