HOW many of us have gotten lost in the maze between Bank and Monument station? Imagine how much harder it would be if you suddenly couldn’t remember where you had to go. “I get very confused with technology”; “I can’t ask what I’m doing wrong to a machine”. These are common refrains from people affected by dementia while trying to get a ticket or journeying across the underground system.
Chief among the complaints driving tube workers to strike this summer were job cuts, pensions and so-called “modernisation” plans. TfL bosses plan are set to cut 600 jobs among underground station workers. It would mean letting go 10 per cent of the workforce.
People with dementia are one of several groups who would be affected by TfL’s planned staffing cuts, together with people with disabilities – spanning from wheelchair users to those with sight impairment – and those who don’t speak English.
The debate about staffing cuts is part of a broader discussion on accessibility. Only 33 per cent of London’s tube stations have step free access. A wheelchair user has to wait for every third bus, on average, before there is room for them to board. Sadiq Khan’s transport strategy aims to make public transport “safe, affordable, and accessible to all”. We are not even close.
Despite this, TfL staff do their best to assist those who need just a bit more help to move around. A TfL spokesperson points to the “Turn Up and Go” service, where people with disabilities get support from the moment they enter the station to the moment they board their carriage.
Yet if the network decides to go ahead with the staffing cuts, people with disabilities will have to rely on the kindness of strangers to descend from the tube or to understand where to go. It would be shameful for TfL to have to delegate this responsibility of care to the other passengers.
To be fair on TfL, they haven’t had it easy. The fight about budget cuts with the government has been excruciating. The funding package provided to sustain the network during the pandemic – when passenger revenue collapsed – has expired. But the mayor has warned that without continued support to the recovering transport system, a prospect of “managed decline” would harm the capital. Discussions are ongoing, with a long-term funding agreement currently being reviewed by City Hall. But TfL is caught between a rock and a hard place: how to modernise and make more stations accessible, all while retaining staff under a shrinking budget?
“People will invest money back in public transport if they feel safe and supported in using it”, says Kirstie Kalonji, policy manager at the Alzheimer’s Society. A big part of the mayor’s transport strategy is about reducing the use of cars to cut emissions – he wants 80 per cent of all trips in London to be made on foot, by cycle or public transport by 2041. Yet most people affected by dementia or disabilities won’t use public transport if faced with the prospect of a mainly automated system. They will resort to cars or taxis instead.
This leads to what Amy Francis-Smith, a specialist architect in inclusive design, calls the “disability tax” – the unfair cost that disabled people have to cough up to travel. By bringing these people back into the underground system, TfL would make more money that could be used to retain staff. It would be a virtuous circle.
The Tube could learn from metro systems elsewhere in Europe. Barcelona’s metro ticket machines were notoriously impossible to use for people with visual impairments and older people. They were envisioned as a cost-saving measure, but they were so inefficient that they required staff to be there to explain how to use them – the expensive opposite of their aim. “So they got people with visual impairments to redesign them, to make them as intuitive as possible”, says Matt McCann, CEO of Access Earth, an app that helps people with disabilities navigate public transport. Barcelona has also set the new target of making 100 per cent of their metro service wheelchair accessible by 2024, and they’re on track to fulfil their goal. It shows it’s possible – even in cities with old infrastructure like Barcelona or indeed, London.
With TfL forced to make significant savings, it is unlikely it will find the money “for what is sadly still seen as a ‘nice-to-have’”, says Katie Pennick, Campaigns and Policy Manager at Transport for All. Yet everything starts with transport – allowing people to reach schools and workplaces.
For all the talk of achieving equality in our capital, with an unequal transport system, how we do it can only remain a mystery.
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