RampItUp: the planning

In my spare time I’m on the board of trustees for AbleChildAfrica, a UK-based charity working with and alongside partner organisations in Africa to achieve equal rights for disabled children and young people. This month they are highlighting some of the challenges faced by people with disabilities in their daily lives. In particular, the RampItUp challenge looks at how hard it can be to get around and make journeys that others take for granted.

My challenge is to get to work via an accessible route. The UK is 14^th in the UNDP Human Development Index (HDI), out of 188 countries that are included. While this is a measure of life expectancy, income and education levels, rather than a measure of disability inclusion levels, you would like to think that the UK, and London in particular, should be fairly switched on when it came to enabling people with disabilities to use public transport facilities. Having spent the last few years pushing a buggy round London I have a fair idea already that things are not always as they seem.

My starting point was to think about the possible routes I might take to work and how easy they might be for a person with a disability. Mainly I’m thinking about someone in a wheelchair but of course there are all sorts of other disabilities that can impact on a person’s ability to get around. Working in central London means that there are all sorts of stations I could travel to and all sorts of routes I could take so, surely, I’ll be able to get to work quickly and simply. Right?

So, let’s look at some of those options:

Starting points:

• Crystal Palace: lifts available from street to platform
• Gipsy Hill: lifts available from street to platform
• Sydenham Hill: stairs down to the platform, no lifts
• Norwood Junction: stairs down to the platform, no lifts

End points:

• Goodge Street: a classicly inaccessible tube station – a lift goes from street level down to almost the platform then you have to take some stairs to get to the actual platform
• Warren Street: escalators from street to platform, no lifts
• Russell Square: classicly inaccessible, as per Goodge Street
• Euston Square: stairs from street down to platform
• Euston: may be feasible
• Kings Cross: may be feasible
• Tottenham Court Road: last time I checked this was another classicly inaccessible station but I’d heard something recently about a new lift being installed so this one may be worth investigating

Interchange points:

• Victoria: stairs to get from mainline station into the tube station, no lifts
• Balham: there is a lift down from the mainline station platform but then stairs to the tube station, no lifts
• London Bridge: there is a very convoluted route from the mainline station to the Jubilee/Northern line platforms, involving several lifts and probably some stairs
• Canada Water: lift from Overground platform to Jubilee line platform
• Brixton: stairs from platform to street, no lifts

So that leaves us with Crystal Palace/Gipsy Hill to Euston/Kings Cross/TCR via London Bridge/Canada Water.

Then of course there are the buses. I could potentially take the bus for part or all of the route. I’m quite familiar with getting a buggy on and off a bus but I’m not so sure about the ramp option – how many buses have this?

Next stop, let’s see what the TfL website has to say on the matter. You can choose a variety of options here:

• Use escalators, rather than stairs – this is ok for buggy users but not much good for wheelchair users
• Step-free to platform only – again, ok for buggy users but could be tricky for wheelchair users
• Full step-free access – this is the one I need

The three options it returns are by 1 or 2 buses, with a notional journey time of 90 minutes (distance = 8.5 miles).  Having sat on the bus to Brixton for an hour at rush hour (distance = 4.4 miles) I didn’t think this was too realistic an option, timewise. No other options are provided, which I assume to mean that it is not possible to go step-free all the way.

So let’s try step-free to platform only. This then throws up one option that includes the train and the tube:

• Crystal Palace to Canada Water by Overground
• Canada Water to Waterloo by Jubilee line
• Waterloo to Russell Square by bus
• 15 minute walk to the office

Total journey time: 87 minutes. Given that it takes about 75 minutes to get to work normally this doesn’t seem too bad so let’s go with this option.

To be continued…