Conventional wisdom determined that such vehicles always had serious drawbacks.

When a wheelchair was carried, there was always a major reduction in seating capacity. Lifts needed up to 2.5 metres alongside the vehicle in which to operate. Extra access doors had to be added to the vehicle. These extra doors, once open, caused serious inconvenience to the passengers in close proximity to them; if the weather wasn't good, these unfortunate folk got cold and wet, and if the weather was hot and the vehicle was air conditioned, they got roasted. Finally, the time taken to load a wheelchair could easily cause timetable disruption.

National Express, in a trial sponsored by the Department for Transport (DfT), operated their London to Bath service with conventional wheelchair accessible vehicles before the legislation came into force and encountered many of these problems.

Without a workable solution, National Express considered going to the DfT and requesting that the legislation be postponed until an answer could be found.

With all these problems to overcome, many said that building a high floor coach that met the requirements of the legislation and that was practical to operate just couldn't be done.

The introduction of the Caetano Levante has proved otherwise.

The initiative of Salvador Caetano brought together the key elements in this project and created what had seemed impossible.

The 300kg capacity lift is located in the riser of the of the bottom entrance step. When not in use, it's impossible to tell that it's there. However, once deployed, the magic begins! It initially emerges from it's housing through the standard entrance door aperture, and once fully out, lowers to ground level. As it lowers, handrails and a safety plate are raised, and a small entrance ramp is let down. When it reaches ground level, the user can board the platform and secure themselves with the grab rails.

The lift then starts the next phase of operation. The entrance ramp rises to a vertical position, creating an effective rear safety plate. The lift then starts to raise the passenger into the coach. As the lift rises, so to does the top entance step, so that when fully in the vehicle, the user has a completely level route from the lift platform into the coach floor.

A wheelchair bay can now be created. The traditional way of doing this was by removing seats from the coach. However, this isn't how things are done on board the Levante! The front nearside double seat is in fact two single seats mounted on their own NMI pedestals, which enables them to be moved to enable the accomodation of a wheelchair. The driver removes the seat bases and slides the seat backs into the required position. Once the seats are relocated, the wheelchair user moves into position. When sited in the newly created bay, the wheelchair doesn't intude into the gangway. The new passenger can then belts up with the standard seat belt, and the journey continues.

The entire operation takes less than four minutes.

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