The Diet passed a government-sponsored bill Wednesday to make railway stations, airports and roads more accessible for the disabled and senior citizens.

The bill, which cleared the House of Councilors unanimously, makes operators of public transportation responsible for improving access for the elderly and physically disabled people.

The House of Representatives passed the bill earlier this year.

The so-called Barrier-Free Transportation Law obliges operators of buses, railways, airlines, passenger boats and other forms of transportation to install elevators and escalators in stations and terminals when newly constructing or remodeling facilities.

They are also required to make their new or remodeled facilities, as well as new vehicles, more accessible to wheelchairs. This includes introducing buses with lower floors and installing movable armrests in airplanes.

Operators that neglect to report on facility renovations or refuse to respond to the government's order to comply with obligations under the new law will be subject to fines of up to 1 million yen.

Those operators who take the steps prescribed by the law will be eligible for subsidies from the central government.

The central and local governments will also carry out projects to ensure public areas are equipped with sidewalks, roadside elevators and guide maps and signs for the disabled.

The law is likely to come into force in November, because it stipulates that it will become effective no later than six months after its promulgation, according to the Transport Ministry.

Citizens' groups welcomed Wednesday's passage of the bill, which will help transport facilities to be less of a hindrance to the mobility of physically disabled people.

At the same time, however, many experts pointed to the need for all facilities to become more barrier-free if the ultimate objective of increasing the mobility of such people is to be achieved.

Hitoshi Matsuzawa, a member of a nongovernmental organization that is working mainly in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward to make areas more barrier-free, pointed out that the bill remains within the boundaries of traditional thinking.

"The central idea of the law is to (improve) facilities. I sense no dimensional expansion in (the government's) way of thinking," he said.

For example, as a result of the introduction of the public nursing-care insurance system in April, there are some instances where elderly citizens have become unable to go to day-care centers because shuttle bus services that were previously publicly operated have been terminated.

"In such cases, we need to have some form of urban planning that would provide for transportation, such as community buses (to serve such homes)," Matsuzawa said.

So Kobayashi, an official of the Japanese Society for Disabled Children, said the new law is pointless if passengers are able to smoothly steer themselves through train stations, only to find themselves stuck the minute they step outside and find a sea of improperly parked bicycles.

He stressed the need to focus on improving issues that are not necessarily linked to infrastructure. "I hope the law will serve as a catalyst to get more people interested in the needs of the disabled."