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An excellent
Andrew Gilligan article in The Spectator (19
September, Chucking millions down the Tube) got Call
Sign thinking about the Paralympic Games, which will be
held in London in the two weeks between 29 August and 9
September 2012. According to Gilligan, Transport for London is
"…to waste £97 million on a ‘symbolic’ project to give
wheelchair users access to Green Park station." His question
to the Mayor is why hasn’t he reined it in? The problem seems to be that |
The Disabled, the Paralympics and the TaxiCard |
 Will the Mayor sponsor TaxiCard during the 2012 Paralympics? |
| TfL intend spending around
£400million on digging new lift shafts and passageways to
provide what it refers to as step-free access for the
disabled to some of the underground stations. Just under
£100million of that huge sum will be spent just on Green Park
Station alone. And the problem? Well the process of converting
the stations only gives wheelchair users that freedom of
movement from street level to the platform. Getting onto the
train itself will be as problematic as it would be even before
work begins. As taxi drivers, we know by the numbers we pick up and set down at Green Park just how busy the tubes are there, so even if some kind passenger were to assist the wheelchair user in boarding the train, the carriages are often packed and a wheelchair just wouldn’t fit. Dial-a-Cab currently have over 6800 registered Westminster TaxiCard users and I would hazard a guess that around 10% are wheelchair users. In that case, none of those 680 passengers would be able to use even a converted Green |
 Park
Station without a great deal of difficulty.Andrew Gilligan goes on to say that there are around 3,500 disabled people living in Westminster. He gets this figure from the number of disabled person’s free travel pass holders - the requirements to get a TaxiCard are different. Andrew’s main point is that it would be cheaper to give every single one of those people a free car for the rest of their lives than to spend that money on converting Green Park Station! Then he quotes a fact that caught Call Sign’s attention. He claimed that for the price of the works at just that one station, you could give every one of the 121,000 Londoners who qualify for a disabled travel pass, £800 worth of taxi vouchers. As the Paralympics last just two weeks, Andrew Gilligan – who we are starting to like more and more |
–
asked why TfL doesn’t just give every disabled Londoner who
wanted to go to the Stratford Games, a free taxi from wherever
they lived? And in all honesty, that sounds like something that
Call Sign can agree with. In fact, we think the idea could be taken even further by allowing taxis that have wheelchair passengers during the 2012 Paralympic Games to have access to the Olympic Route Network. As it stands, the International Olympic Committee decree that only vehicles carrying competitors and those people involved with the Olympic family, will be able to use those routes and there seems to be little anyone can do to change that for the first two weeks. For those two Paralympic weeks, with TfL or Westminster (or both) allowing wheelchair passengers unlimited free use of London taxis, we should surely come under the classification of "family" and get use of the ORN? We asked Mayor Boris Johnson for his view and hope to get a response by the next issue… |
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