Contribution
I rise to speak strongly in favour of all the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and Amendment 56, to which I have added my name.
We are trying to get to the position where more disabled people can travel by bus. A good bus network has a positive impact on the local community. KPMG and ITS Leeds found that a 10% improvement in local bus service connectivity is associated with a 3.6% reduction in deprivation, leading to measurable improvements in health, skills and income. However, many disabled people have poor experiences of using buses. I have had my own.
On New Year’s Eve, a driver refused to put the ramp down, let everyone else on, and then argued that there was no space for me to get on. We were then left with the potential issue of two people with buggies and I arguing over who was able to use the space. The driver refused to engage with me and tried to split my family up; my daughter is an adult, so, fine. The driver then suggested that we all get off and wait for another bus behind—who knows when? I was having a discussion about all this when an amazing woman with a young child in a buggy who was only going one stop further got off, so that I could get on and take a much longer journey.
A number of people have been in touch with me about problems such as having been refused service, ramps not working or drivers not wanting to pick them up. There is also the issue of where the ramp is positioned when buses stop to enable a safe set-down. London buses seem to be in a much better position than others around the country, with induction loops, audio announcements, LCD display screens and information posts, but people should not have to try to count the number of bus stops in order to get to where they are going. In a survey of blind and visually impaired people using TfL, 65% of blind or partially sighted respondents told the Sight Loss Council that making transport accessible was the most important thing to them.
I am briefly going to cover floating bus stops, because they are a massive issue for all people. They are dangerous at busy times of day. When I get off a bus, once the ramp goes down I have to pull a wheelie so I can control the speed. But often, there is not enough space for my wheelchair to fit at the side of a floating bus stop. On Westminster Bridge, which I cross at least a couple of times a day, on many days I see bikes not stopping and running both sets of red lights, and where the floating bus stop is located. Indeed, this morning I saw a delivery driver riding the wrong way over Westminster Bridge in the bike lane. Those getting off the bus would not even think to look both ways. They were in quite a dangerous position.
I agree, slightly, with noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, about cyclists. The situation is dangerous for them, although I find myself turning into a woman of a certain age, shouting at cyclists who run red lights and cause a lot of problems. We have to take into account that TfL’s own published figures suggest that 60% of cyclists do not obey road rules by giving way to pedestrians at crossings. When you factor this into floating bus stops, you can see why the situation is so dangerous.
Evidence has been collated by the RNIB, which is keen to highlight how dangerous floating bus stops are for blind and partially sighted people. Government research shows that when London’s floating bus stops were designed, blind and partially sighted people were not involved in the street design process. Wheels for Wellbeing is worried about the number of disabled people who, because of that, could be discouraged from using buses. I am going to use a phrase that I normally use for my experiences of travelling by train: I just want the same miserable experience of commuting as everybody else. We are not quite there yet, but making it better for disabled people makes it better for everybody.