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You and Yours - Transcript 成人论坛 Radio 4 |
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TX: 23.01.09 - Olympic Transport PRESENTER: PETER WHITE |
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Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 成人论坛 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. WHITE Before the phrase "austerity Olympics" became the favoured term for 2012 the London Olympic and Paralympic Games were to be known as the "public transport Olympics". Cars would be left behind and the capital's transport system would ferry up to half a million spectators between venues, hotels and the sites each day and where possible it would be accessible to people with disabilities. Well four years ago Flash, a wheelchair user and I, travelled across London from Heathrow to Stratford where most of the Olympic venues are being built, we repeated the journey a year later and found the biggest problem was the conflicting information given to us online and by station staff - it often differed. Last week we did it all again to examine whether things have improved. Well Transport for London estimates the journey - from Heathrow to Stratford - should take about an hour and 35 minutes, this time it took one hour 55. ACTUALITY TICKET ISSUER Good morning. WHITE Oh hello. Can I have a ticket to Stratford please? TICKET ISSUER Stratford yeah? What about your friend? BRISTOW I'm Flash Bristow, I'm a wheelchair user. I've come to Heathrow today and I've looked up on Transport for London's website which route to take and it suggests it's going to be tube all the way. Now that's great because last time we did this journey I remember getting very wet waiting for a bus. ACTUALITY WHITE Can I give you a 20, I'm sorry, is that okay? And I'm travelling with someone who's in a wheelchair and so I just wondered what advice you would give about the route. TICKET ISSUER I'd go from - from here to Hammersmith, from Hammersmith I would go - I would take the District Line... WHITE It seems to me, Flash, that one of the problems now is almost that there are too many alternatives. I mean there are going to be 11 lines - underground and over line - going into Stratford. BRISTOW You've also got the choice of do you use the tube all the way from Heathrow or do you take the Heathrow Express to Paddington and try and find your way from there? WHITE He said get the Piccadilly Line to Hammersmith, change to the District Line to Mile End and then on to the Central Line to get to Stratford because that only meant crossing one platform as well. Now how did that square with your information? BRISTOW When I keyed in that I couldn't do stairs or escalators and I needed a wheelchair accessible vehicle that was exactly the route they gave me. WHITE Either he's had a tip off or he's very well clued up. So we'll do that route shall we? ACTUALITY STATION WORKER This is a lift that's operated where you need a member of staff but when they refurbish the station there would be passenger operated lifts that you can operate yourself. BRISTOW Is there a way that I could have known this lift was here? STATION WORKER There's signage all over the place but otherwise you ... BRISTOW But you had to unlock a door to let us in. STATION WORKER Yes. This is the platform you want to London. You're on the correct platform. WHITE And I think that's our train coming in now. BRISTOW I've got a problem here straightaway, I can see that the step up to the train is far too high for me to get on in my wheelchair. I'm going to have to get out, lift it on to the train and get back on the train again that's painful. Luckily there is a luggage space, so there's somewhere to put my chair once I'm on the train. TRAIN ANNOUNCEMENT I would say that as a tube that you can't get on to is not a wheelchair accessible vehicle. And I can tell you that that was a six point seven inch gap there, so even my most able friends who can do wheelies wouldn't have been able to get up it. And my friends in a powered chair who can only do four inches would have had to get back in the lift. WHITE It does just show the complexity of the choices you have to make doesn't it. BRISTOW Yeah, you also have to make the decision based on your ability and whether you're in pain on a given day and whether you'll have the energy to come back after you've gone somewhere. TRAIN ANNOUNCEMENT WHITE This should be quite an easy interchange isn't it, this is just across the platform, I think, this is what I'm expecting. BRISTOW The gap - here it is. One door has a wheelchair symbol by it, so I decided that was the door I'd aim for and I got in but it was a really high step so again I have to get out, lift my wheelchair up and actually that was really quite painful. But they are trialing raised areas of platform which meant that I could get from Tottenham to Brixton, where both of them were raised, and I don't see why they can't do that at other platforms. TRAIN ANNOUNCEMENT WHITE You know that's interesting - change to the Jubilee Line - I wonder why they didn't suggest that? BRISTOW Normally I would try and get on to the Jubilee Line at all costs. WHITE Well we're too late now, we've come out of Westminster. BRISTOW They've changed the destination of this train? [Talking over] It has changed and they've said that it's going to Ealing Broadway which is westbound. WHITE Right we'd better get off before they shunt us to Ealing. PHONE CALL TO STATION SUPERVISOR ACTUALITY STATION SUPERVISOR Hello can I help you? BRISTOW Yeah I need to go ultimately to Stratford. STATION SUPERVISOR Are you able to walk at all? BRISTOW No I'm in a wheelchair. STATION SUPERVISOR I'm just trying to think actually, I don't know what to say to you. We can't get you over to the Eastbound because we have no lifts or anything. Hang on, stay down there I'm going to get someone down to come and assist you. BRISTOW This sort of situation is exactly what I'm afraid of happening and this is why I only use the Jubilee Line extension part regularly where every single station is accessible because if something like this happens and you get put on a platform where you're not expecting to be or the train terminates and everyone has to evacuate you can't get up. ACTUALITY STATION SUPERVISOR Alright? What I recommend you do is take this train then go to Westminster. WHITE I knew we should have got off at Westminster. BRISTOW You did Peter but other people who don't know London ... TRAIN ANNOUNCEMENT WHITE Another announcement that could easily have disrupted us anywhere because a person under a train, Central Line suspended, which of course is the line that we would have been on. So who knows whether we were lucky or unlucky really. Okay here we are finally at Stratford. Flash, first of all, pluses and minuses. BRISTOW Yes it was step free between the street and the platform but getting on to and off the trains was a real challenge. WHITE What about pluses? BRISTOW Definitely what happened on the Jubilee Line where there's level access to get into the train and there's somewhere to park my wheelchair. WHITE Also I have to give them full marks for the announcements. We travelled on three lines - the Piccadilly Line, the District Line and the Jubilee Line - they announced absolutely everything. It wasn't as last time when I was on the Bakerloo Line when it was patchy. This is the third time now Flash that we've done this, do you think they're going in the right direction? BRISTOW It's not there yet but it's better than it was. WHITE If you're somebody coming in from abroad and you've spent all that money coming to the Olympics or the Paralympics why wouldn't you jump into an accessible taxi and go all the way like that? BRISTOW I've got friends who are a couple and they're both wheelchair users, they can't go in a taxi or on buses together because you can only take one at a time. I don't think the Paralympics is going to have one wheelchair user arriving. WHITE Flash Bristow putting me straight. Well listening to that was Wayne Trevor, who's accessibility manager from Transport for London. Wayne, the biggest problem for Flash, as you could hear there, was this business of the gap between platforms and trains which meant she had to get out of her wheelchair to board trains, something she could do okay, although with difficulty, a lot of people couldn't. We went on this journey, we were accompanied by a TFL press officer and you've announced the launch, just in the last couple of days, detailing the size of the gaps on all the stations. A sceptic may think there's more to that than coincidence. TREVOR No pure coincidence. The launch of these new maps has been something we've been working very closely with disabled people on for about nine months now and is really about giving choice to users, so that they can plan before they travel to know exactly which stations might be best for their particular needs. WHITE So that would give you the information on the website where you look for the route that you go would it? TREVOR At the moment they're paper based products, so they're available to download from the website and you can have them sent to your home as well and we're working on getting that information into the online journey planner as well. WHITE I would say that this is probably the key problem for us, I mean you can nit pick about individual journeys - things happen, I know that you can't always do - you certainly couldn't have anticipated what happened on the Central Line - but our problem was the ease of finding information, I mean Flash is about as clued up as you can get, many visitors may not even speak English, how are you going to cope with that on this - on the very complex system that you run - you've got over ground, you've got under ground, you know? TREVOR Yeah clearly, particularly during the Olympics the access to information, the sorts of information we provide, is going to be absolutely crucial to ensuring people have seamless journeys that integrate with the Games and other things that people might want to go to. WHITE What does that mean - I mean the seamless journey's a phrase I'm always hearing, ours was not a seamless journey, I have to tell you, and we're experienced travellers and it did, you know, it did mean taking two changes to go the way we wanted to go, that isn't going to be any different is it by 2012 really? TREVOR No absolutely and in some ways that's quite a positive aspect of our system, there are multiple ways that people could get to their destination ... WHITE But they'd have to do some good research beforehand wouldn't they. TREVOR That's right. If you have specific access requirements it is going to mean that you will need to use some of the customer information products that we provide to work out what's best for you, whether you can manage certain steps and gaps, whether you can manage short walks or long walks and those sorts of things. WHITE Because you say, quite proudly, that a quarter of the stations will be step free, that does mean that three quarters won't be. TREVOR Absolutely, we are the oldest metro system in the world, we have a long way to go in terms of accessibility down to platforms and on to trains as well. But we are doing lots both for the Olympics and well after that as well to ensure that we get this accessibility. There'll be new vehicles for example on the Victoria Line, we've pioneered - as you mentioned in the piece - the use of these level access boarding points which really provide independent access for wheelchair users and other people, without necessarily making use of things like manual boarding ramps which disabled people tell us aren't very good and don't work for them. So we're doing lots in that area. WHITE For me, personally, and a lot of other blind people announcements are essential. Now I praised you for having them on all the lines but I still go on lines where they aren't, why can't they simply - why can't you just say that's compulsory, that's something we've got to do on every line? TREVOR Indeed we've worked quite hard over the past couple of years and you mentioned the Piccadilly Line in your piece and that's something we spent some money on recently in improving the information there. The only line that doesn't have audible information announcements is the Metropolitan Line and indeed that's getting some new trains, they'll be on the system from - starting from next year and over the next few years and they will have both really modern real time information as well as the routine information both audibly and visual. WHITE We'll keep on watching the progress, we'll talk to you next time we do on the line. Wayne Trevor of Transport for London thank you very much indeed. Back to the You and Yours homepage The 成人论坛 is not responsible for external websites |
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