In a blog posted to the ORR’s website, Consumer Policy Manager, Matt Westlake, says that while accessibility has improved, more must be done.
He said: “There is a reliance on accessible public transport. When the sector has issues in any area, from the planning and funding of trains and stations, through to disruptions, communication and training, then disabled passengers will feel the impact most keenly.
“I’ve also seen change during my period at ORR. Disabled people are now travelling by train in greater numbers than ever before. We collect and publish data on the number of assistance bookings and the graphs tell a clear story: what initially looked like a recovery from the pandemic has increased well above the pre Covid-19 levels.”
The blog goes on to say that over the past five years, ORR has surveyed passengers that have booked assistance and have seen an improvement of scores for reliability and satisfaction. However, the industry needs to do better – some of the responses showed that people were getting none of the assistance that they had booked. In order to solve this, Mr Westlake says: “We want to see the industry continuing to work together to identify the areas that need to be improved and taking action to resolve them (…) We need to look for the opportunities for marginal improvement from training on non visible disabilities to lift malfunctions, to mobile scooter policy to the accessibility of websites.”
Read the whole blog and see results from the survey here.
