Tag: Public Transport

The Road to Nowhere.

One of the most important components of a strong business model is to know your target audience; you wouldn’t make much money trying to sell War & Peace to a bunch of 3-year-olds. Surely, then, public transport companies should be going out of their way to provide excellent services for disabled people, given that being a disabled pedestrian is rather difficult. Yet I will avoid public transport at all costs thanks to the difficulties I have experienced when using their services, & I strongly suspect that I’m not the only disabled person to do this.

Taxi companies often have fleets where some of their vehicles have been specifically adapted to accommodate wheelchairs. Despite having spent a substantial amount of money adapting these vehicles, they then go out of their way to make it incredibly difficult for us to use them. Some companies refuse to let wheelchair-users book in advance, stating that they cannot guarantee the availability of an adapted vehicle at any particular time, despite this being the very point of booking in advance. Surely then, this should apply to all of their taxis, but you can book a normal vehicle in advance & they won’t bat an eyelid. This is particularly irritating when you see adapted vehicles being used to transport people who don’t have extra luggage or mobility equipment.

Some taxi services do permit the luxury of booking in advance, but they will always tell you that they cannot guarantee the availability of an adapted taxi at that particular time, which again, is the very point of booking in advance. This is no meaningless disclaimer either; I have waited 90 minutes for a pre-booked taxi to arrive &, if I’m under any obligation to be somewhere at a particular time, I must now leave ridiculously early.

In the miraculous circumstance that a taxi does arrive, drivers will usually have a sulk about having to get the ramp out, & on the drive I am bombarded with invasive questions about why I use a wheelchair.

It’s also a frequent occurrence for people with assistance dogs to be denied access to a taxi, despite this being blatantly illegal. Let’s not even mention Uber or Lyft which, due to the self-employed status of their drivers, have no obligation to provide access whatsoever.

For travelling the local area, I prefer busses. The recent law ensuring that wheelchair users get priority over prams for the space ingeniously named the wheelchair priority spot, has improved things greatly. While some people with prams still take exception to being asked to lift out their tiny child & fold up their tiny pram, insisting that the chronically ill person who is running late should wait outside in the cold, most people are accommodating. The manual ramps, unlike the automatic ones London insists on having, never break down so access is guaranteed. Occasionally a driver might try to close the doors before you board, pretending not to have seen you because they don’t want to have to stand up for 5 seconds to lower the ramp. Other than that, the only problem occurs when more than one wheelchair user wants to use the bus, because how dare more than one disabled person be out & about at any one time.

For longer journeys, coaches are preferable to trains. When assistance is booked (which isn’t even obligatory) it is provided, & not only can the wheelchair be folded up & placed in the hold with the rest of the luggage, but through a series of ramps & lifts a wheelchair can be loaded onto the coach itself. While awkward & longwinded, this far outshines the dreaded trains.

Trains insist you book assistance at least 24 hours in advance; spontaneous travel is not allowed if you are disabled. To receive the booked assistance, you must turn up half an hour early, & even then it’s a lottery as to whether someone shows up. If you are late, even if that is because you’ve missed a connection thanks to the train you were on being delayed, you are denied help. Train guards then go on strike because robots are taking their jobs, but they refuse to do anything at all to help a stranded disabled person. I’ve been left stuck on trains before now, fortunately always having someone with me to get a porter, as purposefully obstructing the doors to make it impossible for the train to leave is apparently a fineable offence, even when it’s because a pre-booked porter decided to take a cigarette break.

Once on the train the disabled toilet is usually out of order, people often leave prams & luggage in the wheelchair spot (and refuse to move it), and the wheelchair spot isn’t big enough to accommodate a wheelchair anyway. In short, the longer, hotter, more awkward coach trip is the easier option.

And God forbid disabled people ever want to go abroad. I don’t have a passport & have never been abroad (!) so I can’t really comment on planes or ferries, but given the frequency with which airports manage to damage or lose wheelchairs, I think this speaks for itself.

A Trip to the Dark Side.

As my alarm burst into life at 5.30 am I began to regret my decision to go to Manchester (which is in Lancashire, the sworn enemy of Yorkshire, for anyone who doesn’t reside in the UK) for a conference on disability & LGBT+ intersectionality. I scoffed down some cereal & coffee, washed & dressed hurriedly, & carefully pinned my hair into something resembling a neat hairstyle. Within an hour I was making my way down to Leeds train station where I met my colleague, & together we wove our way between the extensive building works scattered around the ticket hall. Commuter traffic began to increase as we headed to the platform, which involved a lot of ducking under backpacks & around important-looking men in suits who looked down their noses at everyone else.

Black & white selfie. My hair is in a bun on the back of my head & I'm wearing light eye make-up & lipstick.

My colleague & I had booked a ramp to enter the train, instead of relying on mythical levitation tactics, & to my surprise a porter carrying a ramp appeared with time to spare. The ramp was set up without a fuss & soon enough I was on the train heading to Manchester. Funnily enough, I was in the 2nd wheelchair space opposite another wheelchair user, who as it transpired, was heading to the same conference.

A little under an hour later we disembarked without problem, & I pulled on my raincoat as the first drops began to fall. Sheltered outside a small, inaccessible coffee shop we began to call taxi companies. The first company didn’t take wheelchairs at all. The second only took manual wheelchairs that could fold up. The third only had one wheelchair-accessible vehicle which had been booked. The fourth didn’t even answer the phone. In the pouring rain we headed onto a main road & hailed a black cab, & then spent a good 5 minutes finding a suitable place for the taxi to pull over & let me in. The taxi driver lowered the ramp, barely wider than the wheelchair & with no edges to stop me falling off. With great care I edged up the ramp & sat in the taxi. There were no restraints for the wheelchair so I was forced to brace myself as best as I could while we drove through the city centre.

Eventually the taxi came to a stop nowhere near the venue, & I was forced to reverse down the horrendous ramp, leaving a puddle of rain water in the cab. The rain lessened as we hurried to the conference centre, where I saw two sets of revolving doors.

Revolving doors are to wheelchair users what Shakespeare is to infants; a complete waste of time & resources (in fact, I suspect many adults feel this way about Shakespeare too). There were automated double doors between them however, so naturally I went to those.

“Call reception” was the only button for the doors. In the rain I rang the bell & waited while the receptionist finished having her coffee & chat before the doors eventually opened. Then there was a second set of doors, & again I had to call reception & wait to get in. The fact that able-bodied individuals could come & go as they pleased curtesy of the revolving doors, but that I as a disabled person had to be let in like a dog, was infuriating. I was attending a conference about disability that had disabled speakers, & yet ableism was the first thing I faced.

I made my way to the reception desk where the member of staff told me I hadn’t registered (I had, or I wouldn’t have had the ticket with me) because they had missed my name when creating visitor badges. I got a blank & wrote down my name, then had one small cup of coffee. In that short time I was recognised by the first of several readers & followers, something which was a very new & novel experience, which I must admit to enjoying. Then the conference began.

The opening screen of the conference presentation, projected onto a pull-down screen in the sports hall.

As we sat around tables in a chilly sports hall the leaders introduced themselves, & then the first talk about the social & medical models of disability was underway. An hour later we broke off into smaller groups for more interactive workshops, & I remained in the sports hall to look at how being a marginalised group within a marginalised group (i.e. being disabled among the LGBT+ community, or being LGBT+ among the disabled community) effected social interactions, while my colleague made her way upstairs. After the morning’s work we were directed to lunch, a buffet which was impossible to reach from a wheelchair, & went to eat in a dining area filled with long wooden tables & long wooden benches, the type that cannot be moved to accommodate a wheelchair user. I chose to get out of my wheelchair & sit with my colleague, but the others were forced to eat in a separate area with their lunch. I regretted not joining them to make a point, although it did mean that I was nearby when the assistance-dog in training decided to take a nap on the floor.

A black Labrador, assistance dog in training, resting on a patch of sunlight on the floor.

After lunch was a short talk before another workshop. This time I made my way upstairs, having to wait some considerable time for the lift as at least 1 wasn’t working. In the room a member of staff stood in the only space available to reach from a wheelchair due to the cramming of furniture into a small space, & once she did move I had to kick a chair out of the way. Shattered, I barely took in the next session, not least because they decided to over-run into a much-needed break.

I made my way back downstairs for the final session, once again in the sports hall. This one addressed discrimination that can be experienced within marginalised groups, particularly racism, ableism, & transphobia within the LGBT+ community. It is the only time I have ever seen Grindr screenshots used to make a poignant statement.

Inside the conference centre, looking up the staircase towards a glass ceiling.

Afterwards there was a drinks reception, which was ironically one of the most accessible parts of the day, & slowly we drifted away. Myself & my colleague wandered through Manchester, the day having turned bright & sunny, & we stopped for a drink purely for the purposes of hydration. We waited until the commuter traffic had tailed off before heading to Manchester Piccadilly station, & this time we had the cabin to ourselves when we entered the train (also without incident).

Inside Manchester Piccadilly train station about to head home.

A little while later as we pulled into Leeds it was going dark, & the station was the quietest I have ever seen. A ramp appeared as if by magic, & I said goodbye to my colleague who caught a taxi home, this time having no trouble whatsoever as I wasn’t travelling with her. About ten minutes later I was home myself, & not long after that, asleep.