It noted that many buses and taxis have ramps that deploy to allow wheelchair users on and off. “Several train operating companies were interested in a future train design that could incorporate the ramp within the train step,” the RSSB report stated.
“During the industry consultation, it was suggested that such ramps could be similar in design to those used on buses and licensed taxis. As well as the benefits of reduced manual handling risk, improved stability, a higher SWL and faster deployment, it was suggested that customer perceptions may also change if such a system were available. Improved confidence in the boarding equipment among wheelchair users would raise the profile of the TOC and encourage repeat travel by wheelchair users.”
Almost a decade further on, and with thousands of new rail vehicles being brought into service, the railway remains wedded to staff deploying manual ramps with wheelchair users facing a lottery of whether there will be someone to help them.
Grey-Thompson explains the value of independence: “Huge. And what you feel if you’re stuck on a train and you can’t get off, you have liberty removed from you. I’m not sure it’s understood enough – there was a case of someone coming in from Clapham failing to be aided off in London and ending up in Gatwick. Lots of stuff like that happens. You’re not talking hundreds, but more than it should.”
From anecdotal evidence, Grey-Thompson reckons that booked assistance fails between 30% and 50% of the time. “Network Rail has been very positive and supportive. In many cases the train operating companies I’ve spoken to didn’t realise the scale of the problem. One of the stations that was pretty bad started measuring it, and put something in place. They were really shocked that they were missing so many customers, but it was just that they hadn’t thought to measure - and that’s when you feel a bit forgotten.”
Merseyrail is confident its new trains with their sliding step and standard platforms will remove the need to book assistance or wait for help at a station if assistance can’t be booked beforehand. As Grey-Thompson notes, disabled people are no different to many others in not always knowing what time they’ll be catching a train.
“On a Thursday I rarely know what time I’m travelling because it depends what happens in Parliament. I try to book, but that can take 15 minutes and the system is harder than it needs to be. But I know the Rail Delivery Group is looking at the booking system, which is great.”
Andy Heath reckons he will have a turn-up-and-go service, but there’s more work needed to make stations accessible. Merseyrail has just received funding for lifts at another four stations – Hillside, St Michaels, Hunts Cross and Birkenhead Park as well as money for a larger lift at Liverpool Central. “We’ve now just got 12 stations that are difficult for people with reduced mobility to get onto platforms,” he says. “As we’re moving along more and more, this is an absolute game-changer. It puts us at the head of the pack.”
Asked what the wider rail industry could learn from Merseyside’s experience, Heath is clear: “It’s about having a joined-up approach. The train operator, the infrastructure provider and Merseytravel were quite clear on what they wanted.
“If you get all parties involved, committed to what you’re delivering, and working together - I won’t say there wasn’t some tension in terms of when work was going to take place with Network Rail… is that you can get things done.
“If any other operator was going to do this, or indeed the DfT, it’s about collaboration. It’s about the customers as well. We got a lot of involvement from the city region on this – the business leaders understood the work that was taking place and it was as simple as ‘you will have disruption to your journey to work for x weeks but then the work will be done and we can move on’.”
Merseyrail is bringing level access because it’s what Merseytravel wants. Grey-Thompson believes that the DfT could do more: “It’s not beyond the wit of man to solve,” she says. “I recognise there’s not a bottomless pit of money but, you know what, it could be better than it is. We’re an ageing population and we need to look at that as well.”
But look through recent invitations to tender from the DfT for franchises and there’s very little about accessibility. The ITT for West Coast in 2018 ran to 293 pages in which the word “accessibility” appeared five times. Within bidders’ customer experience plan they had to explain “how the franchisee will work with passenger representation groups and/or organisations that represent a range of accessibility needs to co-design, test and implement solutions”.
The ITT gave one example of how bidders might exceed the DfT’s requirements: “Specific initiatives to deliver a transformation in the end-to-end passenger experience to improve accessibility for persons with physical, mental, sensory or cognitive impairments, enabling such passengers to plan their journey and travel by train confidently and independently (should they wish to do so).”
The DfT also wanted bidders to create an accessibility panel to provide advice about how to make facilities and customer services more accessible.
While there’s nothing in the ITT that prevents bidders putting forward the equivalent of Liverpool’s network, there’s nothing to say that the DfT is driving the railway towards offering passengers in wheelchairs a network they can use independently.
But this general ambivalence from the DfT didn’t stop Abellio in its bid for East Anglian railway services in 2015. It won with a plan that proposed sweeping away the entire current fleet in favour of new trains from two manufacturers, Bombardier and Stadler.
Greater Anglia’s first Stadler trains are now being tested and, like Merseyrail’s, they come with low floors that bring the potential for level access for wheelchairs. GA’s Stadler fleet will operate Stansted Express, rural and London-Norwich inter-city services. Bombardier’s new fleet will run suburban services into Essex and Cambridgeshire.
Greater Anglia Accessibility Manager Rebecca Richardson told RailReview that the new Stadler trains would mean that “a lot more people will have much more independence but we’ll still help others”. She cautioned that the new fleet, even with its sliding step, would “not be a panacea but will significantly improve people’s experience”.
Greater Anglia’s work merits mention in the DfT’s 2018 The Inclusive Transport Strategy: Achieving Equal Access for Disabled People, which says: “Under the Greater Anglia franchise, new trains being delivered in 2019 will have automated platform gap fillers fitted. These will be operated by on-board staff and have the potential to provide reliable alternatives to the need for a manual boarding ramp to bridge the gap between the train and the platform. The Department will work with the operator to promote and share its experience of using this technology to inform the wider industry perspective on tackling the challenge that steps/gaps from train to platform present to passengers.”
That’s about as far as Inclusive Transport Strategy goes in addressing the gap between platforms and trains that prevents wheelchair users travelling independently.
Richardson explains that Greater Anglia would still have ramps with its new trains but with the Stadler sliding step, they become more of a bridge and less of a ramp. She says that she saw persons of reduced mobility (PRM) standards as a minimum: “We wanted the best we could.”
Even with the gap closed as much as possible, some wheelchairs might not be able to cross it. Chairs with small wheels are less tolerant of gaps than those with bigger wheels. Richardson notes the tolerance of +/-50mm on what’s defined as level access which was something the RSSB report Platform train interface strategy from 2015 also mentioned. It said: “Some studies suggest that small vertical steps such as the ±50mm of the PRM, while capable of negotiation by a wheelchair, can actually constitute a trip hazard for other passengers and this is certainly not ‘level boarding’ as it is sometimes termed.”
This report puts more emphasis on safety rather than accessibility with the first sentence of its executive summary saying: “Incidents at the platform train interface (PTI) account for almost half of the total passenger fatality risk on the main line railway network, and about one-fifth of the overall passenger fatality and weighted injury (FWI) risk.”
However, it goes on to recognise that the PTI affects many areas of the railway that are not always compatible: platform clearances for passenger, freight, and plant vehicles; platform and passenger vehicle floor heights; optimal step and gap configurations for passengers with and without mobility problems and those using wheelchairs; and passenger train designs, including door configurations, train capacity, provision for luggage, and how these might affect overall performance.
While placing strong emphasis on preventing slips, trips and falls, the report acknowledges the benefits that reducing the platform-to-train gap could bring. These include reducing the risks of trips and falls, reducing delays caused by helping wheelchair passengers board or alight (which it estimated at 47,000 minutes’ delay and £1.5m in financial penalties annually), improved boarding and alighting speeds and reducing injuries to staff helping wheelchair passengers.
Yet none of its suggested short, medium and long-term actions for enabling wheelchairs (and mobility scooters) to board and alight trains include providing train floor heights that match platforms. It suggested investigating deployable ramps as an alternative to manual ones, investigating how to provide wheelchair users with real-time information and assistance and, in the long-term (Control Period 8 and beyond, so in a decade’s time) having a consistent approach to PRM and using real-time data to provide individual tailored experience.
At Network Rail, Access and Inclusion Manager Lorna Brown-Owens says there are “all sorts of ramifications in making platform heights standard”. She confirmed that it was possible to alter platforms to the standard height and offset but added: “And then you have services with the existing rolling stock that still have, say, a 15-year life-cycle so even if you put in the legislation height and offset you will still have a definitive stepping distance in terms of platform and train interface.”
That’s classic ‘chicken-and-egg’. Network Rail could be reluctant to spend – or DfT to fund – to provide platforms to a standard height and offset until the operators use compatible trains. And operators could be equally reluctant the other way.
So why is it so hard to provide a low-floor train that matches the standard 915mm platform? That Stadler provides such a train for Britain shows that it’s possible.
It’s taken a very different approach to building diesel trains with low floors because squeezing the size of a diesel engine under a train with a low floor is difficult. Greater Anglia’s bi-mode (electro-diesel) four-car units will have two passenger vehicles on either side of a short diesel power car. This car will have a central corridor to allow passengers to move from one end of the train to another.
Stadler reckons that having the central power car will cut noise and vibration but, crucially, removing diesel engines from under the floor allows it to produce a train with a 960mm high floor. It says the train “complies with the new technical specifications for interoperability including the legislation for persons with reduced mobility. Its low floor design enables a level boarding on every passenger door and therefore optimises the passenger flow and minimises the dwell times.”
Bombardier has several trains that offer low floors to provide level access. Its Omneo range offers floor heights between 550mm and 920mm. However, Omneo is an electric double-deck train, too big for Britain but now running French regional services. Bombardier’s Talent 3 regional train comes with floors to match 550mm or 760mm platforms and is set for use in Germany, Austria and Italy.
For Britain, Bombardier offers its Aventra EMU which will be coming to Greater Anglia, South Western Railway, c2c and West Midlands Trains, is just entering service with London Overground as Class 710 and has been carrying Crossrail passengers since 2017.
Asked why trains could not have lower floors to match a standard platform height, Aventra Interim Chief Engineer Ben Parry told RailReview that Britain had no such thing as a standard platform height.
“Nominally all platforms in the UK should be 915mm above rail level, but much of the network does not meet this standard,” he says. In addition, curved platforms meant that train steps had to be higher than platforms to prevent the two striking each other or the gap between the two was wider.
He adds: “The unique challenges of the railway mean that it needs to be treated as a whole system in order to fix some of the key interface areas, such as the platform-train interface. Modifying infrastructure to make it significantly more standardised would greatly aid in this regard.
