Dame Tanni Grey Thompson forced to crawl off train!

[Elderflower14]

Makes me angry and sad in equal measure.
I have had similar issues with ds2 travelling on the train. He is deaf, dyspraxic and autistic so perhaps not quite the same as Tanni. People sometimes don't arrive to help him and his luggage off the train. It happened as recently as Saturday when no one came to take him down to his train. With three minutes to go a TFL man took him down.
I was with a train accessibility manager having a meeting due to bad service last year. I have dyspraxia too so don't use the lift when I have luggage. We walked down the steps to the underpass and the lift was broken..
"Oh the lift is broken.. How would ds2 and I get up to the platform?"
"That's not our lift it's TFLs"
"That's not what I asked... How would ds2 and I get up to the platform?"
"There is another lift round the corner!"
"But it doesn't tell you on that lift where the other lift is does it??" 🤔 🤔 🤔
Another time when ds2 was left to walk through an underpass at midnight alone I complained and the lady said she didn't suppose he looked deaf!!! That made me very angry.
The sunflower lanyard has helped but unfortunately ds2 forgot his on Saturday and when he started to get stressed the TFL man told him to shh.
Everytime ds2 is left on a train I complain. I'm aware that he is able to get off the train and find someone but I always say that he could be someone in a wheelchair like Tanni and unable to get off the train.
I read on the Euston Station X page where a wheelchair user asked staff to get a ramp to help him board a train. Twice they told him he didn't need a ramp and to try and board without. The third time they went and got the ramp. When they got back the train had gone and the man was left on the platform!! 😡 😡
I have sort of made it a mission to bring this sort of thing to train companies attention.

I heard the interview on Radio 4. It's awful 😢

Dreadful. I recall her recounting something similar when trying to get off an aircraft some years ago. Why is it so difficult for people to get help when travelling? It's shocking.

That is really depressing in this day and age. All of it. Your son walking through a tunnel by himself, the poor guy asking for a ramp, all if it. I haven’t read/seen the Dame Tanni Grey Thompson story.

To fight your difficulties the way she has then be faced with that ignominy ..

I felt so sad for a wheelchair user at South Kensington station last week. No lift. Complete nuisance for us, with a buggy, but we only need the buggy for a short space of time. .

I keep wondering what she did. I assume she had to get on another tube to a station with a lift. But I wonder how late it made her and how disheartening it must have felt.

It is very disheartening and it dents ds2 confidence every time. He thinks it's his fault and something he's done wrong.
I believe in praising when things go right too. I ring up and praise staff who have gone above and beyond.
Last year on ds2 birthday he went to Yorkshire from Kent with assistance for the funeral of his dear friend and Makaton tutor who shared his birthday. His return journey went wrong resulting in him sitting for an hour at Sheffield as he had missed his train due to an earlier one being late.
The train he eventually got on had a guard who was an ex special needs teacher who was proficient in Makaton. It was almost like ds2 friend had waved a magic wand. The guard was lovely. He got off the train at King's X. Walked with ds2 to St Pancras and sat with him till his train came in as I was worried about him walking alone between the stations at 11pm. That was excellent service... Which I praised.

.

I'm not surprised..I've had a lot of issues with trains (including being put on the wrong one) and despite a meeting with the station manager, nothings changed.

They once had to re-route a train for me as the lift at Cambridge station was broken and it was due to go into a platform that needed the lift.

I'm disabled and I regularly experience similar.

My son is a wheelchair user. We use tfl to travel to London and I preplan and check every journey, including doing actual pre runs by myself to check train to platform space.
At 15 I'm teaching him what I check and research so he can learn to be independent. Also how to cope when things go wrong and how to advocate for himself. Things always go wrong.

The guard at Paddington tried to put ds2 on the wrong train last year. Ds2 was due on the Elizabeth line. Guard put him on the wrong train. Then told ds2 off and told me via video call that ds2 was panicking. With good reason as he had him on the wrong train and got him on the correct one with two minutes to spare. That was a complaint put in!!

I'm not surprised sadly. I'm a wheelchair user and I'm ambulatory to be able to get off the train but my wheelchair is heavy and needs two strong people to lift, I wouldn't want to rely on other passengers to do that, recipe for disaster. Luckily I haven't yet been completely left on a train.
I have been left for longer than usual then the staff turn up and make jokes like "bet you thought I wasn't coming!". Well yes, yes I did think you weren't coming and I was panicking. Or jokes like "we don't charge on Tuesdays" which was symptomatic of wider issues at that station (major city), because the (lovely) dedicated assistance staff clocked off at 7pm and then it was the duty manager's job. Whoever was on duty in the evening very clearly resented it and acted like they were doing me a favour every time, hence joking about charging.

Once I'd booked assistance at one station and ended up having to get the train from the next station along, which as Grey Thompson says, should be doable as we have the right to turn up and go. When I went to ask for assistance at the ticket office he told me I couldn't just get on a train when I felt like it because I would delay the service and they would "get in trouble" if the cause for the delay hadn't been pre-booked. I politely said I had the right to get on a train without pre-booking and explained the situation of having to change stations, and he got really arsey with me and accused me of trying to tell him how to do his job. I was really upset by now but stayed calm, I wasn't shouting or swearing being abusive in any way, and tried to explain that I wasn't trying to tell him how to do anything I was just asking for help, at which point he threatened to kick me out of the station and refuse me boarding for being rude to staff. I left and went up to the platform where the staff who's actual job it was were more than happy to put me on the train. I didn't put a complaint in because the journey was returning from visiting a dying relative in hospital and funnily enough I had more to think about in the next few weeks.

It’s absolutely awful and I know she constantly encounters these problems. (I follow her on Twitter). It’s time companies put time and money into complying with the law and making transport accessible for everyone.

I'm so sorry this happened to you... 😔 😔

Thanks. I think he must have been on some sort of power trip. It was a while ago and I look younger than I am so he saw a young girl in a wheelchair who was already shaking with stress asking for help as an opportunity to get on his high horse and give a lecture on the "necessity" of pre-booking. And it wasn't even his job!

I put in a complaint and was told to describe the person who "helped me". They couldn't grasp that's a bit hard as someone who is visually impaired

There's a station I sometimes change at which is unstaffed. I keep getting told I need to find the member of staff on the train I'm getting on. I had to ask how and got no response. After a meeting with staff I was told they'd put a taxi on when the station is unstaffed.

And apparently they are given disability training. Dread to think who does it if they're telling someone who needs sighted guidance to go and find staff

I had similar with Virgin trains...
Can we ring your son to ask how his journey went?? "
" No because he's deaf!! "
" Can we ask you then..? " (Shades of" "Does he take sugar??")
"No you can't ask me as I didn't take the journey
.. You can email him though!!"

@CherryBlo my DH's dad died unexpectedly, so he had to get a train back to his home city. We didn't have time to book assistance in advance for him and the staff were really arsey about it.

WheelieGoodLife on Instagram documents experiences like this, it happens far too frequently. She's been told off for not booking assistance when she has, in fact, booked it. She's been left to struggle up steps alone (she's paralyzed, completely non ambulatory) when the lift is broken. She's had to argue with people who fill the wheelchair area with luggage on trains and get stroppy when she asks them to move it.

It's a horrific situation that I, as an able bodied person, had no idea was happening.

I am appalled and upset that this keeps happening. It's 2024 for goodness sake.

I have disabled family members and worry about them traveling alone. I'm wondering what we can collectively do about it? Are there campaigns that we can get behind for example?

Absolutely awful

If anyone's on Twitter / X there's a lady called flowergirl_ion who posts a lot (she's a wheelchair user) about trains and (lack of) access

It's disgusting and so commen. I have a family member who is a wheelchair user (large heavy electric chair) and their local bus drivers will often not move the bus 5 metres from the designated bus stop to a raised kerb to enable them to access the bus because "I can't do that, this is the bus stop". If I was there then I would probably be banned from using that bus service for the words I might feel compelled to call that bus driver.

That's disgraceful. Utter scumbag.

I think everyone in a public facing role should have to do training spending time experiencing different needs and disabilities e.g. if you work on the trains you should have to take some journeys in a wheelchair/blindfolded/with noise cancelling headphones on etc. It might make people more empathetic when it comes to support.

I agree with @Carwashcath that more training needs to be done for public facing staff in transport companies. I had a very short snapshot of how brutal it is when I had two small children in a double buggy. When it's quiet everyone is nice, but when its busy they'll throw you on the line if they think you might hold them up for a split second. We were leaving London once and when the platform for our over busy train was announced people ran to ensure a seat on the train, leaving the elderly and infirm having to stand.

Sophie Christiansen (paralympian) is very very vocal on social media about her experiences of travelling on public transport and staying in accessible rooms in hotels. She unfortunately experiences many of the same issues but is doing her best to try and raise awareness

I agree we need way more training.
I'm never sure about the try it in a wheelchair/ blindfolded thing. I just suspect that the assistance would work perfectly and all the ramps would be in place because it's a training drill, and they wouldn't really get the sense of how hard it is to be reliant on other people day in day out, or the sense of utter panic when the assistance doesn't come, because they can just get out of the wheelchair. But it'd be something to try I suppose!