Friday, 22 February 2019

Buses and Trains

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We went to Manchester for the day but, rather than drive, we decided to use public transport. We got a bus to the railway station and a train to Manchester.

It’s not possible to reserve wheelchair spaces on buses but it is something that you can do on a train. We have reserved wheelchair spaces on the train before and this involved having to make a phone call to purchase tickets and reserve the space. When we have done this in the past we’ve had mixed results. Sometimes it’s gone really well, and worked exactly as it should, and other times it’s gone badly.  Two memorable occasions for me were when we were travelling home from London one time, and someone else (not a wheelchair user) had taken our reserved wheelchair space, refused to move and staff didn’t help either. The other time was travelling to Liverpool and no staff arrived with a ramp for the wheelchair. Fortunately George is able to walk short distances, so was able to get off the train, and I got his chair off, although it was difficult on my own. It would have been disastrous if George was unable to walk.

On this occasion we booked our train tickets online and didn’t call to reserve a wheelchair space. Sometimes you have to travel on the spur of the moment, so would be unable to book a space. We decided to do this, just to see how it went.

The video below tells you how we went on.

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