Thesis (Ph.D.)--Aberdeen University, 2009. / Title from web page (viewed on June 26, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

This study examines policies which provide support to rural bus services and the extent to which these policies meet the accessibility needs of rural communities in Scotland. In recent years, accessibility opportunities have improved for the vast majority of rural people because of increased ownership of the private car.  However, the minority of people who do not have access to a car can face considerable difficulties in accessing all opportunities and may consequently be socially excluded.  The Government wishes to promote modal shift from the car to public transport wherever possible in rural areas.  Policies which provide support to bus services represent a mobility approach to tackling rural accessibility needs. In this study, the methodology used is the ‘Accessibility Policy Assessment Tool’ (APAT), which is used to systematically assess the accessibility impact of policies through a mixed methods approach.  This approach is used to ascertain the ways in which bus support policies could delivery more effective accessibility impacts to rural communities, and is critiqued as part of the study.  The main results of the study were that there are particular characteristics of some policies which enabled them to be more effective at delivering accessibility benefits to some rural communities.  Specifically, those policies which were delivered in a bottom-up fashion allowed local accessibility needs to be better understood and the services put in place could be more responsive to these needs.  In conclusion, it is suggested that bus support policies delivered in a top-down fashion may not effectively be meeting accessibility needs, and thus tackling social exclusion, and that it appeared difficult for urban-delivered policies to meet the accessibility challenges present within rural communities.