Providing equal access to Britain’s rail network is about more than just toilet facilities, argues Mark Cooper

The widely reported experience of Paralympian Anne Wafula Strike, who had to urinate herself after not having an accessible toilet on a train, is for me as a disabled person a sad but familiar tale. I myself have had several ‘near misses’ because of a lack of suitable working toilets on trains. For me however, access to appropriate toilet facilities is not the only significant part of widening access to the railway network for disabled people that needs addressing – the others are proper assistance on and off trains and for more than one wheelchair user to be able to travel in a carriage. (I am a wheelchair user but recognise there could be many more issues)

Disabled people can book assistance to help them on and off trains. This can be the provision of a ramp for a wheelchair user to board the train or a staff member to guide a partially sighted person to their seat. Due to staff pressures this service is not always reliable at peak times, which leads to stressful situations as disabled people try to get off at the correct station. In many newer stations, such as those in Berlin and the Docklands Light Railway, there are level access platforms so disabled people who are able to can board or leave the train independently.

I regularly use both the East and West Coast mainlines to visit family. My partner and I are both in electric wheelchairs and cannot transfer to companion seats. We cannot access trains in the same way as non-disabled passengers and travel together as most carriages only have a single wheelchair space. We are travelling to Birmingham at the end of January and may possibly face the decision about which one of us travels first class – as that is where the other space on the train is. This may seem amusing, but it is unfair that we are forced into to making this choice. With innovative design, train companies could have dual-purpose spaces that allow for non-disabled passengers to sit and multiple wheelchair users when needed.

Experiences like mine, those of my partner and Anne Wafula Strike are not about access to trains or toilets, they are about social justice. Disabled people have the same right to access services as non-disabled people and that is something that should be brought into the debate.

Successive governments have poured billions of pounds into improving railway infrastructure over recent decades. As the investment continues disability should be at the forefront of people’s minds or else disabled people will continue to receive a standard class service on a first class railway system.

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Mark Cooper is a Labour activist. He tweets at @markc1984

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