Disabled Tanyalee Davis - more rail travel woes.

But do people realise that the booked assistance system doesn't differentiate between a passenger in a wheelchair who requires ramps, from an elderly person with their friend who's relative has booked them assistance to carry their case and navigate the station? Rightly or wrongly I don't know. But they are given the same priority in the system yet disabled passengers literally need the assistance as an absolute necessity to make the railway accessible to them.
Yet I could phone the TOC assistance up next week and book luggage help for my gran and grandad going from Doncaster to Newquay at all points because they have two big cases and I want them to have help pulling them. Maybe these should be differentiated somehow through the booking system or maybe the availability of non disabled assists should be limited so they can only booked if there are no disabled assistance bookings at that particular time at that particular station?

Some assists are booked under elderly luggage help on the list, sons and daughters will turn up at the booking office and say their mum and dad's etc are here for assistance. The staff may have to fetch the luggage from the car boot and then the relatives leave the station and the staff then take care of everything from there at all points. It's no way possible this could be accommodated for all elderly passengers or even medium stations would have hundreds a day. But booked assist does allow this and no priority is given to disabled bookings over elderly luggage bookings. And staff only have two hands each.

Essan said:

But as with many things, we only hear about the one time it goes wrong, not the hundred times it works to perfection

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Two times in one week for Tanyalee Davis. And she has said she's faced problems throughout her time in the UK.

Do we excuse those bad experiences because of their frequency is less than the good?

AlterEgo said:

They probably will because they are not responsible for the assistance provided. It’s the airport you need to sue.

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Not after you get to the gate !

pt_mad said:

But do people realise that the booked assistance system doesn't differentiate between a passenger in a wheelchair who requires ramps, from an elderly person with their friend who's relative has booked them assistance to carry their case and navigate the station? Rightly or wrongly I don't know. But they are given the same priority in the system yet disabled passengers literally need the assistance as an absolute necessity to make the railway accessible to them.
Yet I could phone the TOC assistance up next week and book luggage help for my gran and grandad going from Doncaster to Newquay at all points because they have two big cases and I want them to have help pulling them. Maybe these should be differentiated somehow through the booking system or maybe the availability of non disabled assists should be limited so they can only booked if there are no disabled assistance bookings at that particular time at that particular station?

Some assists are booked under elderly luggage help on the list, sons and daughters will turn up at the booking office and say their mum and dad's etc are here for assistance. The staff may have to fetch the luggage from the car boot and then the relatives leave the station and the staff then take care of everything from there at all points. It's no way possible this could be accommodated for all elderly passengers or even medium stations would have hundreds a day. But booked assist does allow this and no priority is given to disabled bookings over elderly luggage bookings. And staff only have two hands each.

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I'm not sure about Equality Act 2010 position in regards to whether they cover elderly people needing an assistance or not. If they don't cover elderly people, then perhaps some sort of priority system could be used but I reckon it'd make the system more complicated than necessary.

To be honest, this is really supposed to be TOC's job. They have the full story to investigate and data they can review in order to fix this problem.

I regularly have problems with my booked assistance not showing. This has happened at York before to me- my assistance with ramp didn’t show and I had to go down the step- I ended up falling and twisting my ankle.
Fortunately for me I was on my way to a meeting for VTEC, I had a quiet word with the lady in charge and she made appropriate noises on my behalf- I had VIP treatment on my way home! I used to complain when it didn’t turn up but it happens so often I don’t bother now. I almost expect it now.

As an aside, her companion wasn’t with her this time & it didn’t escalate, but was corrected as soon as could be and handled better. he wasn’t there. Just saying.

Deafdoggie said:

As an aside, her companion wasn’t with her this time & it didn’t escalate, but was corrected as soon as could be and handled better. he wasn’t there. Just saying.

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Just saying what precisely?

In the GWR incident, the mistake made by a rail employee wasn't corrected as soon as could be.

bnm said:

Two times in one week for Tanyalee Davis. And she has said she's faced problems throughout her time in the UK.

Do we excuse those bad experiences because of their frequency is less than the good?

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She's an unfortunate soul.........

LowLevel said:

I once had a party of 14 visually impaired people plus dogs board my train going to different destinations. I was on the phone for ages!).

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What are the chances of that?!?

father_jack said:

She's an unfortunate soul.........

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Yes its unfortunate she's disabled and has to use trains in the UK.

bnm said:

Yes its unfortunate she's disabled and has to use trains in the UK.

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If this were Switzerland...

...it’s not.

InterCity:125 said:

What are the chances of that?!?

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It's not that unusual. They're a group of people with a significant thing in common and many of them choose to meet up for conventions etc and thus end up on the same trains. Unfortunately by the time the single manned station's booking clerk, myself and a controller who happened to be travelling had everyone safely on board with their belongings, assistance dogs etc the train was well over 10 minutes late and somewhere in the region of 60 people missed their hourly connection to an airport station (including several of the visually impaired folk) but unfortunately that's life - safety first and all that and they have every right to travel. Perhaps one of those situations where advance notice would have been useful but such is life!

LowLevel said:

It's not that unusual. They're a group of people with a significant thing in common and many of them choose to meet up for conventions etc and thus end up on the same trains.

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Ah, I didn’t think they might be returning from something!
I thought their journeys were all totally unrelated.

InterCity:125 said:

Ah, I didn’t think they might be returning from something!
I thought their journeys were all totally unrelated.

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If I recall they'd all met and got on well in various little groups as you do and decide to travel back part of the way together. However several of these little groups landed on my little class 158 and I ended up arranging assistance for passengers travelling to places as diverse as London, Scotland, the West Midlands, Wales, Yorkshire and Manchester while trying to keep track of which folk needed which interchange and whose cases are whose (this is far more of a challenge when the owner can't see their case and thus describe it and recognises it by feel which conversely I'm incapable of doing).

It was certainly a test of my skills put it that way. I met some very lovely and interesting people that day though.

What TOC do you work for?

InterCity:125 said:

What TOC do you work for?

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Social media policy prevents me from saying that specifically I'm afraid!

Ah, sorry to ask!

As I've mentioned before, I think the "handoff" approach for wheelchair users and other assistance cases is wrong. There needs to be an active hand-off each time an assistance person is passed in responsibility from one person to another - passing a piece of paperwork from hand to hand may be a good way to achieve it.

In principle there needs to be a single person wholly responsible for the person requiring assistance from the point they "book in" at the origin station to the point they leave the destination station. If the person needing to "hand off" cannot find the person to "hand off" to, they must remain wholly responsible until the point that they can do so - even if it means e.g. a guard's next train meets with delay as a result.

To use an example...
1. Wheelchair user arrives at Euston and presents themselves at the Network Rail Reception. They check in with an individual in the waiting area. That individual is responsible for them while they remain there. They do not leave their sight unless and until the responsibility is handed off to someone else including a conversation with the person requiring assistance at each stage to introduce the new person and tell them what they are responsible for doing.

2. They are handed off to the person who will assist them to the train. That person does so, and boards them if that is how it works, then remains with them until they are handed off to the guard[1].

3. The guard returns to them at the destination station and remains with them (and does not dispatch the train) until the assistance person there arrives to unload them. Reassurance is given in the case of delay, and the guard is responsible for making appropriate telephone calls until this is sorted.

4. The assistance person manages any hand offs required in the station until they are "discharged".

Obviously the guard need not remain with them during their journey, but they should proactively speak to them and accompany them a few minutes before arrival at their destination to ensure they are not left feeling they have been forgotten.

[1] For DOO, the driver. Even if in this context personal interaction is not possible, the driver must "hold the baton" while they are on the train and would be responsible for ensuring they are helped off the train and not departing until they have been.

InterCity:125 said:

Ah, sorry to ask!

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It's good to hear of excellent customer service to the disabled. Well done LowLevel!

Brissle Girl said:

BNM suggests this is another shameful indictment as to the way railways treat disabled customers. I'd suggest this incident, unlike the previous one, is simply a cock up, where one or more employees trying to do their job properly made a mistake. These things happen, and unfortunately disabled passengers, who by their nature will need more personal handling, will always be more prone to this sort of situation.

I've made lots of mistakes in my career, and I'm sure most people have too. Let's try and keep this incident in proportion, although clearly happening to the same person and so soon after the previous incident demonstrates that the industry does need to try harder.

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It is indeed correct that we keep a sense of proportion and also understand that individuals make mistakes. When those mistakes are as glaringly bad as that which happened on Sunday 15th July, it is right that they publicised.

I say it is a shameful indictment because the statistics show that failings of the rail industry in this area are beyond a 'sense of proportion'. Wide ranging research was carried out by the Office of Rail & Road in 2017. Surveys and mystery shopping were carried out across all franchised TOCs. Whilst satisfaction levels with assistance actually provided were high, the research highlighted high levels of incidences where booked assistance failed, either in part or fully. Satisfaction levels with ad-hoc assistance (turn up and go) was also a cause for concern

20% of the people surveyed who booked passenger assistance didn't receive all the assistance booked. 12% received none at all. So, for every five journeys a person makes, with booked assistance, they can expect one problem. And for every eight bookings they can expect one instance where no help at all is forthcoming.

For turn up and go disabled passengers, 28% were unhappy with the assistance they received.

Key conclusions from the research are that staff training and communications along the chain are lacking.

Further reading can be found on the ORR website. The research documents are too large to quote here.
http://orr.gov.uk/rail/licensing/licensing-the-railway/disabled-peoples-protection-policy
Look under 'Current Research'.

More can be done. More must be done.

Bletchleyite said:

As I've mentioned before, I think the "handoff" approach for wheelchair users and other assistance cases is wrong. There needs to be an active hand-off each time an assistance person is passed in responsibility from one person to another - passing a piece of paperwork from hand to hand may be a good way to achieve it.

In principle there needs to be a single person wholly responsible for the person requiring assistance from the point they "book in" at the origin station to the point they leave the destination station. If the person needing to "hand off" cannot find the person to "hand off" to, they must remain wholly responsible until the point that they can do so - even if it means e.g. a guard's next train meets with delay as a result.

To use an example...
1. Wheelchair user arrives at Euston and presents themselves at the Network Rail Reception. They check in with an individual in the waiting area. That individual is responsible for them while they remain there. They do not leave their sight unless and until the responsibility is handed off to someone else including a conversation with the person requiring assistance at each stage to introduce the new person and tell them what they are responsible for doing.

2. They are handed off to the person who will assist them to the train. That person does so, and boards them if that is how it works, then remains with them until they are handed off to the guard[1].

3. The guard returns to them at the destination station and remains with them (and does not dispatch the train) until the assistance person there arrives to unload them. Reassurance is given in the case of delay, and the guard is responsible for making appropriate telephone calls until this is sorted.

4. The assistance person manages any hand offs required in the station until they are "discharged".

Obviously the guard need not remain with them during their journey, but they should proactively speak to them and accompany them a few minutes before arrival at their destination to ensure they are not left feeling they have been forgotten.

[1] For DOO, the driver. Even if in this context personal interaction is not possible, the driver must "hold the baton" while they are on the train and would be responsible for ensuring they are helped off the train and not departing until they have been.

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This all seems fairly sensible.

In a DOO context, at least on my patch, what is supposed to happen (and does 50% of the time) is that platform staff board wheelchair, or otherwise impaired, passengers immediately behind the driver and inform them where they are travelling to.

What often happens is that they are boarded a long way back, out of ear shot, so the driver has no way of knowing where they are travelling to (or will be completely unaware of them if they board at locations without monitors).

On several occasions I have:

- had passcoms (justifiably) pulled when being dispatched due to staff not materialising to disembark wheelchair passengers;

- been changing ends and realised there is a wheelchair passenger still on board waiting to be disembarked (of course I have alerted platform staff and apologised profusely - very undignified for the passenger concerned);

- contacted the signaller to arrange for assistance for a visually impaired passenger who had boarded at his usual station at a weekend when the ticket office was closed and there were no staff to speak to (no idea if he should have booked in advance but seemed the best idea at the time);

- left wheelchairs behind at non staffed locations (I feel awful about this but I’m not ramp trained and cannot board them myself - it would be madness to try and end up tipping them into the cess). This is most likely to be because of the person not having booked assistance in advance.

In fact a typical situation arose earlier tonight: I pulled into a station and noticed the previous “down” service (15 mins ahead of mine) standing at an adjacent platform;

It turned out the driver had noticed a disabled wheelchair passenger with no-one to board them and had had to contact the signaller to ask him to arrange for platform staff to come up to the platform (a driver cannot leave a train unattended on running lines at that location so he could not go and find them himself, neither could he board her himself).

Quite an ugly situation had arisen with a number of (inebriated) passengers on the platform, annoyed about the delay which can’t have been at all pleasant for the wheelchair passenger who had been let down.

As is so often the case on the railway, a lot of the problems boil down to:

- lack of effective and timely communication;

- insufficient staff in many locations.

Bromley boy said:

This all seems fairly sensible.

In a DOO context, at least on my patch, what is supposed to happen (and does 50% of the time) is that platform staff board wheelchair, or otherwise impaired, passengers immediately behind the driver and inform them where they are travelling to.

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The problem arises of course when stock is designed in such a way that the designated wheelchair space isn't behind the driver.
And the added complication of the exit at the destination being at the other end of the train, and the customer insisting that that's where they want to be.

Bletchleyite said:

There needs to be an active hand-off each time an assistance person is passed in responsibility from one person to another - passing a piece of paperwork from hand to hand may be a good way to achieve it.

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That sounds to me like an excellent idea. It seems obvious it should be only for booked assistance, as otherwise there will be no paper trail to start with. And to keep it manageable, it should probably only be for passengers who are unable to board/alight the train without assistance. Even with those constraints, I still think it could avoid a lot of these cases which seem to be caused by multiple things happening at once causing staff to become distracted (the Quintinshill accident comes to mind).

Does anyone know who co-ordinates the booking of assistance and whether they might be reading the forum? I presume ATOC have it outsourced to a third party provider?

Bromley boy said:

It turned out the driver had noticed a disabled wheelchair passenger with no-one to board them and had had to contact the signaller to ask him to arrange for platform staff to come up to the platform (a driver cannot leave a train unattended on running lines at that location so he could not go and find them himself, neither could he board her himself).

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I'm curious: was the driver's employing TOC the same as the TOC operating the station? I ask because LowLevel has referred earlier in the thread to contacting staff at stations directly to arrange assistance. It seems to me more likely that the train crew would have the relevant contact details if it was the same TOC. But what I'm really wondering is whether the need to relay a message via the signaller is because the TOC has no (more efficient) defined procedure for this scenario?

Indigo2 said:

Does anyone know who co-ordinates the booking of assistance and whether they might be reading the forum? I presume ATOC have it outsourced to a third party provider?

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Passenger Assist is provided by Northgate Public Services on behalf of the Rail Delivery Group.

If you want an idea of how the booking system is meant to work then the following link shows that in detail. The booking system itself generally works fine and the research I mentioned earlier shows that users are generally very satisfied with it. The problems start when the bookings are handed over to the ground troops.

https://passenger-assist.org/energyflow/WebHelp/pa.htm

Lets be brutally honest here the degree to which disabled passengers can receive timely assistance is limited by the quantity of on board and platform staff available. If you want the perfect system that posters have outlined above then you need more staff and who pays? Shall we put up fares to cover the cost of disabled assistance? Get more subsidy from Government? Cancel an enhancement project? One thing is for certain running about shouting "disabled rights" and quoting this and that legislation is clearly not working and never will.

Indigo2 said:

I'm curious: was the driver's employing TOC the same as the TOC operating the station? I ask because LowLevel has referred earlier in the thread to contacting staff at stations directly to arrange assistance. It seems to me more likely that the train crew would have the relevant contact details if it was the same TOC. But what I'm really wondering is whether the need to relay a message via the signaller is because the TOC has no (more efficient) defined procedure for this scenario?

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A driver isn't likely to have the contact numbers at all. There's a limit to who they can contact out and about as well.

Control will if they ring them and on services operated by a guard they should have phone numbers for all manned stations they call at regardless of TOC, generally small or medium stations don't differentiate for passenger assistance (or shouldn't), at larger terminals Network Rail staff might do it or more than one TOC might have staff present. As an example, EMT at Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Piccadilly and Leeds have contracts with Northern for their staff to provide train dispatch but Network Rail do the passenger assistance.

Would pulling the passcom be acceptable if a passenger cant get off due to booked assistance failing to materialise.

matt_world2004 said:

Would pulling the passcom be acceptable if a passenger cant get off due to booked assistance failing to materialise.

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I doubt it - my understanding is the passcom should only be activated in an "emergency" which of course is a subjective term. Is there any guidance re acceptable passcom use out there?

matt_world2004 said:

Would pulling the passcom be acceptable if a passenger cant get off due to booked assistance failing to materialise.

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Absolutely. The person in question may have no other way of letting the crew know about the problem.

This is not a rare occurrence at all. A wheelchair user I know who lives in south London has had the booked assistance fail to turn up at her local station many times, and has had to double back, use the passcom on DOO trains, and (I’m pretty sure) be helped home by the BTP.