"Get rid of the heritage routes" - Disability Rights Commission

[Fullyplumped]

who is instead assuming that all disabled people are wheelchair users who need wheelchair access,

...and that all disabled people actually want to see our heritage destroyed in our name, when that's not the case at all.

I seriously doubt if your first point is the case.

There is no need to destroy routemaster buses. They have their place - in a museum.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

I amn't being disablist. I know perfectly well that there are all kinds of impairments and all kinds of ways to design out disability. The issue here is about the symbol of a heritage of exclusion. That is why some people were celebrating. You aren't excluded from modern buses as a result of the impact that your impairments have on your use of the bus - you are inconvenienced as a result of the adjustment that permits previously excluded people to access the service. Big difference. Someone with a significant mobilty impairment is wholly excluded from the heritage routemaster bus.

Actually, you're wrong, it's the same difference really.

I could make the opposite argument, for the reintroduction of Routemasters and the abolition of the big bendy buses with a huge space at the front and fewer seats on grounds of accessibility for people with a 'significant'* mobility impairment who need to be able to find a seat to sit down on.

And then when wheelchair users were effectively re-excluded from the service, I could argue that they hadn't, in fact, been excluded, they had just been "inconvenienced as a result of the adjustment that permits previously excluded people to access the service".

No difference whatsoever. What includes them excludes me. And vice versa.

* Incidentally, how are you defining "significant". Again, you're weighing things towards there being a hierarchy of disability in which wheelchair users are more 'significantly' mobility impaired than non-wheelchair users.

As I explained earlier, whether or not a disability is "significant" in this specific context (of accessibility to public transport), you're again assuming that to automatically be the wheelchair user.

If a new, modern bus is accessible, then the wheelchair user is not significantly mobility impaired, they are able to get around, because the service is accessible. To them. But in that case, a more mobile person who wasn't a wheelchair user, but who nevertheless was unable to use public transport *unless* they were guaranteed a seat, then in that specific circumstance, the person who you believe to be not significantly mobility impaired *would*, in fact, in that context, be the more mobility impaired of the two groups, because if a 'mobile' person isn't mobile, because they can't use public transport, but a wheelchair user can, then the 'mobile' person becomes significantly mobility impaired in that situation.

It's akin to the debate about the terminology: disabled v. dis-abled. Is a person intrinsically disabled? Or is it that they are on a fundamental level, and to all intents and purposes would be able, if they were not dis-abled by society?

Routemaster Bus: lots of seats, but really inaccessible entrance, different levels and steps even on the ground floor, plus there's an upper level
* Wheelchair user is dis-abled in this context
* Person with some other impairments is able

Modern Bendy bus: fewer seats, lots of passengers expected to stand
* Wheelchair user is not dis-abled in this context, they are able to use public transport
* A person with other impairments, for example, someone who can't stand for long periods and needs a seat, or someone who can't strap hang and so needs a seat to travel safely, both of those *are* dis-abled by the new bendy buses.

 

[Mrs Magpie]

Just to throw the cat amongst the pigeons....I know people with certain impairments who prefer the Routemasters because the suspension is so much better and doesn't jar the spine like modern buses do.......obviously accessible buses should be built to the same high standard as Routemasters, but it is possible to get disability clashes......eg cab drivers who won't take my husband's guide dog because of allergy which he'd be fine about.

 

[Mrs Magpie]

Also I know someone who gets panic attacks who doesn't travel by bus at all any more whereas he could handle Routemasters because he could get off in a hurry.....

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

I agree with you Mrs Magpie. But is seems as though the DRC (and fullyplumped) has one model of disability in mind only when it comes to people who want/need to use buses, and that's the wheelchair user.

Although according to fullyplumped's way of thinking, the likes of your friend who suffers from panic attacks isn't now dis-abled, and he isn't 'significantly mobility impaired' (even though he's now unable to travel where and when he wants, he's *not* mobile, he's therefore mobility impaired) he's simply "inconvenienced as a result of the adjustment that permits previously excluded people to access the service". I'm sure that's a comfort to your friend while he's housebound or travelling miles on foot or spending a fortune he can probably ill afford because he's unable to catch a bus.

Tbh, I'm really glad that there are so many buses that are wheelchair accessible nowadays, and I'm really glad that so many buildings are being adjusted, and I'm not arguing against that at all (despite what fullyplumped seems to think), it's just that I think the arguments can be so blinkered and so strident that in the attempts to include one excluded group, another previously included group are excluded in the process. That's unsatisfactory. There has to be a way of compromising and accommodating both groups.

I'm not arguing for the denial of the 'right' to access of wheelchair users (in favour of people with other types of disabilities), likewise it would be nice if the DRC would just stfu and stop trying to deny the equal (not superior, not inferior, but equal) 'right' to access of disabled (non-wheelchair user) users of public transport.


[whispers] Plus, aesthetically, from a design perspective, they are so much more beautiful than the modern versions.[/whispers]

 

[Roadkill]

The issue here is about the symbol of a heritage of exclusion.

By that token, virtually everything built before about fifty years ago is a 'symbol of a heritage of exclusion,' isn't it? Shall we knock down most of the historic buildings in the country and scrap all the preserved ships, buses, trains and the rest of it, just to make sure people don't have to see such symbols, and have done with it?

 

[Monkeynuts]

It's political correctness gone mad! You should share your views with these people.

Your link doesn't work, but I suspect it is something inappropriate and offensive.

"Political correctness gone mad" (ho ho you joker you) would be suggesting that we don't bother having transport that is accessible. No-one is suggesting this.

If you are unable to see that the provision of a full bus service which fully accessible to wheelchair users means that it is possible (and indeed acceptable) to offer a parallel service that isn't accessible to everyone, or to see the wider point that once essential services are provided for, then the idea all it that we must get rid of anything else that can't be used by everyone else, is completely absurd beyond all comprehension, then you are a prize twat

 

[beeboo]

By that token, virtually everything built before about fifty years ago is a 'symbol of a heritage of exclusion,' isn't it? Shall we knock down most of the historic buildings in the country and scrap all the preserved ships, buses, trains and the rest of it, just to make sure people don't have to see such symbols, and have done with it?

I was in the park the other day and guess what - they had rowing boats and pedalos on the lake. How are you supposed to get in those with a wheelchair, eh? And paid for by the taxpayer no doubt Not to mention the bikes for hire.

And there was a band playing on the bandstand - how are the deaf people supposed to benefit from that? Not to mention the flowerbeds which were doing nothing for the blind or olfactory impaired.

Absolute disgrace, I took the first Routemaster out of there.

 

[dogmatique]

Does that make my legs a symbol of the "heritage of exclusion"?

How dare we all walk around taunting the disabled by our very own mobility!

Nob.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

I followed the link on another thread (about funding low carbon programmes) to the Downing Street petition site. Here's one I came across:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/homedelivery/

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to reconsider his Government's proposal to halt payments for home delivery of prescription continence products to urology patients including those with multiple sclerosis, spinal injury, spina bifida and bladder cancer.

If the Disability Rights Commission wants to get a bee in its bonnet about something, then instead of complaining about the few Routemasters that are still running, I think they should be concentrating their efforts on something like this, which potentially means that people with mobility problems who receive home deliveries may in the future have to pay for such a 'privilege'.

 

[Yossarian]

I think this Edwards guy must have some kind of personal grudge against Routemaster else he wouldn't be pissing in his pants about only 16 of them being run on a special route for tourists and bus-spotters.

 

[Guineveretoo]

It's political correctness gone mad! You should share your views with these people.

Oh my word, that is an unpleasant website!

 

[tim]

My mother lives in North-east Derbyshire, where there are no routemasters but no disabled access buses either, just clapped out Stagecoach double-deckers with three steep steps at the entrance. Not just wheelchair unfriendly, but unusable by anyone with even slight mobility problems. Services also run at three hour intervals, stop at 6pm and charge huge amounts for very short and juddery trips. This sort of service which I think is common outside London really uis something to get angry about. Why waste so much breathe on attacking a routemaster service that supplements anexisting regular 24 hour wheelchair friendly service. Or do disabled people ouitside London not count.

On a different note, am I alone in finding the stairs many new double-decker buses more dangerous than the ones they've replaced than. I've been thrown down (as the result of a combination of bad-driving and crap personal physical coordination) that long dangerous flight if stairs they've got. Routemasters and older Pay as you enter buses have semi spiral stair, which means that if you slip there's always a near-by corner to wedge yourself into

 

[Roadkill]

My mother lives in North-east Derbyshire, where there are no routemasters but no disabled access buses either, just clapped out Stagecoach double-deckers with three steep steps at the entrance. Not just wheelchair unfriendly, but unusable by anyone with even slight mobility problems. Services also run at three hour intervals, stop at 6pm and charge huge amounts for very short and juddery trips. This sort of service which I think is common outside London really uis something to get angry about. Why waste so much breathe on attacking a routemaster service that supplements anexisting regular 24 hour wheelchair friendly service. Or do disabled people ouitside London not count.

Well said.

I suspect fullyplumped was somewhere near the truth when he talked about the Routemaster being symbolic of a previous age of exclusion: it's always easier to attack symbols than to make any real changes. Making noises about the few remaining Routemasters in London is much easier, and will garner more publicity, than trying to take on companies like First and Shitecoach over the state of their bus services nationwide.