Charting a route to truly accessible public transportation

For peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, trav­el­ling from A to B can be an anx­i­ety-induc­ing expe­ri­ence. Social media feeds tell hor­ror sto­ries of peo­ple being aban­doned on trains. Infor­ma­tion can some­times be inac­ces­si­ble – such as the time when Nation­al Rail changed its web­site to black and white to mark Prince Philip’s death, mak­ing it unus­able for those with visu­al impair­ments. 

While fig­ures pub­lished by the Depart­ment for Trans­port state that 99% of bus­es are acces­si­ble and 92% of trains, this is not always reflect­ed in the lived expe­ri­ences of those with dis­abil­i­ties. 

“A lot of solu­tions in the trans­port indus­try can be described as being acces­si­ble on paper but actu­al­ly the jour­ney can still be very dif­fi­cult and stress-induc­ing,” says Katie Pen­nick, cam­paigns lead for Trans­port for All, a pan-impair­ment cam­paign organ­i­sa­tion aim­ing to improve the acces­si­bil­i­ty of London’s trans­port net­work.

These chal­lenges can vary from a lack of acces­si­ble infra­struc­ture to trans­port plan­ning apps direct­ing peo­ple to sta­tions that aren’t step-free. “Dis­abled peo­ple face bar­ri­ers, dif­fi­cul­ties and incon­ve­niences at every stage of the jour­ney,” Pen­nick adds.

The pan­dem­ic has exac­er­bat­ed many of these issues and has often cre­at­ed new chal­lenges for those with dis­abil­i­ties. Pen­nick explains that in some instances con­tact assis­tance was “essen­tial­ly scrapped” because of Covid restric­tions, while the move to al fres­co din­ing has left lit­tle room for wheel­chair users to nav­i­gate city streets, an issue that Trans­port for All has cam­paigned on through its equal pave­ments pledge.

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly what we’ve seen over the pan­dem­ic is a lot of schemes and ini­tia­tives rolled out very quick­ly that haven’t nec­es­sar­i­ly had acces­si­bil­i­ty in mind and have actu­al­ly fur­ther exclud­ed dis­abled peo­ple,” Pen­nick says “It’s all very well hav­ing an acces­si­ble bus fleet, but if the bus stop or if the pave­ment on the way to the bus stop is inac­ces­si­ble, the bus­es are irrel­e­vant.” 

Technological opportunities

A new pas­sen­ger assis­tance app is one way that trans­port providers are hop­ing to improve the expe­ri­ence of those with acces­si­bil­i­ty needs. After ini­tial­ly design­ing an app to improve the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence of train pas­sen­gers in gen­er­al, Tran­sre­port founder Jay Shen soon realised the technology’s poten­tial to improve the jour­neys of those with dis­abil­i­ties. 

While pre­sent­ing the app to a pan­el of trans­port indus­try experts, Shen was approached by equal­i­ty con­sul­tant Nick Goss, who is also a wheel­chair user. He explained how the app could help peo­ple like him­self, who have been left at sta­tions with­out some­one to assist in get­ting onboard the train.

The con­ver­sa­tion stuck with Shen. “As an able-bod­ied per­son, we can take trav­el­ling by train for grant­ed. But for dis­abled peo­ple, the anx­i­ety kicks in when they start plan­ning the jour­ney. They need to know whether the sta­tion is acces­si­ble, if they need a ramp to board, whether some­one will be there to help and whether there’s an acces­si­ble toi­let.

“This plan­ning can take hours, not to men­tion the jour­ney itself, which can be a stress­ful expe­ri­ence.”

Shen set about cre­at­ing a pas­sen­ger app which allowed peo­ple to plan their jour­ney and noti­fy rail oper­a­tors of their acces­si­bil­i­ty require­ments more eas­i­ly. After three years of devel­op­ment, the Pas­sen­ger Assis­tance app has been rolled out across all rail providers thanks to a part­ner­ship with Nation­al Rail. It’s been down­loaded more than 3,000 times.

The slow pace of change is part­ly down to out­dat­ed tech­nol­o­gy, accord­ing to Shen. “In the past, staff relied on email and fax to see the book­ing infor­ma­tion of peo­ple with acces­si­bil­i­ty issues, which can be hard to track at a busy sta­tion dur­ing peak hours. With the app, all this infor­ma­tion is live and up-to-date.”

There are also plans to intro­duce new fea­tures for plan­ning bus, taxi and under­ground jour­neys, as well as help­ing peo­ple nav­i­gate air­ports. “Our vision is to pro­vide a tru­ly, door-to-door, acces­si­ble trav­el expe­ri­ence,” Shen says. “We need to realise that peo­ple are not dis­abled because of their med­ical or phys­i­cal con­di­tions, they are dis­abled by the inac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of the soci­ety around them.”

Improving understanding

This is an ele­ment of acces­si­bil­i­ty that Govia Thames­link Rail­way (GTR), the UK’s busiest rail oper­a­tor, is con­scious of improv­ing. Its new­ly appoint­ed acces­si­bil­i­ty lead Carl Mar­tin has been tasked with lead­ing a cul­tur­al change with­in the rail provider and pro­mot­ing the work it’s doing to improve acces­si­bil­i­ty.

Mar­tin read­i­ly admits that acces­si­bil­i­ty was some­thing that he hadn’t con­sid­ered for the first 36 years of his life, but fol­low­ing a motor­cy­cle acci­dent that left him paral­ysed from the chest down, he start­ed to see the world from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive.

“I’m very focused on peo­ple and how peo­ple deliv­er our ser­vice because how you’re dealt with can make you feel val­ued as an indi­vid­ual with­in the com­mu­ni­ty,” he says. Over 3,000 of GTR’s front­line staff have under­gone dis­abil­i­ty aware­ness train­ing.

“It’s real­ly impor­tant that every assis­tance works: one failed assis­tance is one too many,” Mar­tin adds. 

His role will also see him pro­mote the suc­cess­ful jour­neys made by pas­sen­gers, to help give con­fi­dence to oth­er trav­ellers with acces­si­bil­i­ty needs. “If in a year’s time I can say that we’ve increased the num­ber of peo­ple with acces­si­bil­i­ty needs trav­el­ling on our net­work, I will have done what I set out to achieve.”

It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that cater­ing for those with dis­abil­i­ties is not a minor­i­ty pur­suit. Rough­ly a fifth of the UK pop­u­la­tion has a dis­abil­i­ty (14.1 mil­lion peo­ple) and it is esti­mat­ed that the com­bined annu­al spend­ing pow­er of house­holds with at least one dis­abled per­son totals £274bn. 

“Trav­el is a fun­da­men­tal right and acces­si­bil­i­ty should be cen­tral to any sys­tem or infra­struc­ture design,” says Pin­nock. “It can no longer be thought of as a lux­u­ry or a ‘nice-to-have’.”