South Western Railway is launching Assisted Boarding Points at some of its stations to enable passengers with reduced mobility to summon assistance up to ten minutes before travelling, instead of having to give 24 hours' notice of their journey. The facility is planned to be rolled out across all SWR stations in the coming months.
The story was reported in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/busines...-launches-10-minutes-notice-assistance-scheme
and on the SWR website: https://www.southwesternrailway.com...boarding-assistance-service-in-industry-first
The Guardian story says the scheme will only be of use to people with smartphones, although the story on the SWR website says there will be a direct phone number as well as a QR code to scan. If this is the case, then people with old-style 2G mobile phones will presumably be able to call that number, although it will still be of no use to anyone without a mobile phone.
The map on the SWR website at https://www.southwesternrailway.com/travelling-with-us/assisted-travel/assisted-boarding-points would also appear to suggest that Waterloo itself, Ewell West to Bookham and Dorking, Reading station, Pinhoe to Exeter and the Island Line will be excluded from the scheme. Basically the facility will not be available wherever SWR serves stations that are managed by other operators, particularly GWR and Southern. The map does show it as being available between Havant and Portsmouth Harbour, but I believe that the Portsmouth stations are all SWR-managed stations.
Has anyone here already made use of this facility, or seen or travelled with anyone using it?
The story was reported in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/busines...-launches-10-minutes-notice-assistance-scheme
and on the SWR website: https://www.southwesternrailway.com...boarding-assistance-service-in-industry-first
The Guardian story says the scheme will only be of use to people with smartphones, although the story on the SWR website says there will be a direct phone number as well as a QR code to scan. If this is the case, then people with old-style 2G mobile phones will presumably be able to call that number, although it will still be of no use to anyone without a mobile phone.
The map on the SWR website at https://www.southwesternrailway.com/travelling-with-us/assisted-travel/assisted-boarding-points would also appear to suggest that Waterloo itself, Ewell West to Bookham and Dorking, Reading station, Pinhoe to Exeter and the Island Line will be excluded from the scheme. Basically the facility will not be available wherever SWR serves stations that are managed by other operators, particularly GWR and Southern. The map does show it as being available between Havant and Portsmouth Harbour, but I believe that the Portsmouth stations are all SWR-managed stations.
Has anyone here already made use of this facility, or seen or travelled with anyone using it?
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