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Basil Jet

wrote:
On Jun 5, 4:38 pm, "E.L. O'Hesra"
wrote:
MIG wrote:
On 5 June, 13:46, wrote:

So if disabled can't be accomodated then the best solution is that
no one is? Is that what you're saying?

More that the disabled will never be accommodated and will continue
to be ignored unless new works have to meet certain standards.
There are centuries of precedent for this and they've had enough.
Sometimes the requirements seem to go too far, but I understand why.

There is a more useful and cheaper alternative: that each railway be
allowed to open new inaccessible stations so long as the number of
inaccessible stations on that company's network gradually goes down.
So if they opened up a new branch with three stations where
wheelchair access would be expensive, relatively pointless or
impossible, they could make up for it by making six other stations
wheelchair accessible elsewhere on the network where it was cheaper
and/or more useful. The current rules make certain new stations
financially unviable, helping neither the disabled nor the able
bodied.

Can you name a single potential new station that have been made
unviable by the accessibility rules? Wheelchair access doesn't add
much to the cost, if planned from the start, certainly compared to the
costs of modifying an existing station. If a potential spot is
unviable with the rules, then it is unlikely to have had a clear cut
case in the first place.

IIRC putting lifts in a brand new station in a cutting or on an embankment
approximately doubles the cost. Allowing passive provision for future lift
installation costs very little. With new stations in relatively quiet areas,
such as Eastfields, the cost of lifts could easily make or break the
business case for the station. The money spent on installing lifts at a
quiet station like Eastfields which already has a wheelchair-accessible
station next door at Mitcham Junction would have been much better spent on
installing lifts at a busier station in an area with no wh-acc station, such
as Tulse Hill or Peckham Rye. (Actually, Eastfields has level access to both
platforms, and the lifts are merely part of the footbridge over the level
crossing - an utterly ridiculous example of wasting money on political
correctness if ever I've seen one. I wonder if those lifts were used once in
their first year.)