Introduction.

Urban transport systems impose barriers to physically impaired people, which impedes them from normally carrying out daily activities such as visiting the doctor, studying or working. This situation can exacerbate a vicious circle in which these people evidence lower levels of education and income and, in general, lower welfare.

Objective.

Perform a characterization of the physically impaired people in Tunja to know their commute patterns and problems of accessibility to public transport.

Materials and methods.

The research, located in Tunja, was based on two surveys: a household survey of transport applied in 2012, which allowed to know the households' economic activities as well as the commute patterns of the city of Tunja; and a specific survey conducted with physically impaired people in 2014, which enabled us to identify the main problems they must face when commuting.

Results.

A socioeconomic characterization of the physically impaired population in Tunja was made. It was found that 95% of this population have difficulties to commute in the city, and 88% use the public transportation service, especially taxis, which increases their transport costs.

Conclusions.

This work can be considered as a first contribution to the development of empirical research related to the commute patterns and problems of the physically impaired people in the city of Tunja, Colombia.

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