Wheelchair
Accessible but not
Elderly or
Disabled Accessible.
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The Disability Discrimination Act states that all taxis must be wheelchair accessible by the year 2012. Bristol City Council has brought this date forward to 2008. Saloon taxis, not being wheelchair accessible, will be banned.
If a person collecting donations for equipment for the disabled went into a room full of people and there was a taxi driver present, would they all say to the driver “ You have to pay our share”? Most would consider this to be unfair.
Bristol City Council and the Government, however, think this a good idea, so good in fact that they have made it a condition of taxi licensing.
The taxi driver has to fund the provision of a specialised vehicle from his own pocket to carry out a social service, a service that should be funded from the public purse. It is society, as a whole that should be meeting the needs of the wheelchair bound, not an individual.
Under the government’s 10-year plan {Transport 2010. The 10-year plan}£132 billion of public money will be spent on transport. £59 billion will be spent on modernising local transport, £60 billion on the railways and £7 billion for a strategic rail authority. With new rail franchises lasting up to 20 years, and the bus company that runs a monopoly in Bristol, they must be looking forward to many happy years ahead.
Who do you think might get the benefit of these billions of pounds?
The fat cats of transport, the bus companies who already thrive on subsidies and the rail companies who are in such a state of disorder they now want you and I to help them out. Both of these sectors have shareholders to keep happy, and when it comes to priorities it’s the travelling public who come second, and it shows in the service they provide.
The wheelchair regulations for buses will only apply to new buses with over 22 seats. These will not be fully wheelchair accessible until 2015 (single deck) and 2016 (double deck). When it comes to the turn of these big companies to become wheelchair accessible they will have their share of the big pot to pay for it.
What will the taxi driver get? Nothing!
The irony is that the vehicles that taxi drivers are being forced to buy may be wheelchair accessible, but they are not disabled-person, or elderly-person friendly.
Many older people
cannot get in or out of them.
The Elderly.
The Prime Minister has stated “One of the greatest opportunities that faces us in this century is to respond to the needs of this ageing population, and to harness effectively the contributions older people can and do make to society”.
A Help The Aged report forecasts that by the year 2021 one in three people in the UK will be aged over 60.
So why are the city council and the Government making it
hard, or impossible, for the elderly to use a taxi?
Some reports from so-called experts say that black cabs (London types) are fully accessible and meet
all needs. Well I am sorry Mr Expert, but you are wrong. They do not meet the
needs of the elderly or many others of the public. Politicians may take the word of these experts, because they give
them the easy answer they want. My 33 years as a taxi driver tells me something
different.
You will not design a vehicle to meet all needs any more than you will get one size shoe to fit all men.
The Solution.
The sensible solution is to have different types of taxis, saloon and London type.
The current policy of 100% wheelchair taxis by 2008* will exclude many of the elderly and disabled who are not in wheelchairs from taxi use. This is wrong and flies in the face of the changing demographics of this country.
Our population is getting older and we are living longer. So let us start
building a taxi transport system that meets the needs of our ageing population,
not excluding them.
I was told that when a councillor was informed of the problems that people were having using these wheelchair accessible vehicles, she said, “ Let them use private hire”. Her name was not Marie Antoinette, but this does have a ring of “Let them eat cake”.
One of the things that the elderly are most concerned about is price. In a taxi they like to see the fare on the meter and to know they have recourse should they be overcharged. This would not be the case if they were not riding in a hackney carriage taxi, as fares for private hire cars are not regulated, and in some areas the cars are not even licensed.
People need taxis.
This is the opening paragraph of a document from the Disabled Persons Transport
Advisory Committee, Advice for Taxi Drivers.
Taxis are an invaluable means of door-to-door transport for many people. For a large and growing number of elderly and disabled people, they are quite literally a lifeline. Often taxis provide the only means of accessible local transport, or the only accessible link to long distance transport, for example, by rail or air. In fact they are the most flexible form of transport there is.
By adopting the 100% wheelchair accessible taxi policy, you will be cutting off the very people that the Disability Discrimination Act was supposed to help.
(*2)In this country there are 6,000.000 plus disabled,
with about 800.000 who use wheelchairs
only some of who use them all the time,
some of who have sensory rather than physical impairment,
some wheelchair users can transfer from wheelchair to car without difficulty.
I would say that on those figures many more disabled people would be prevented from using a taxi than would be enabled if saloon taxis were banned.
Not all disabled
people are in wheelchairs. More than 20 million people in this country,
including many who are young and look very fit, have arthritis. Many of these
would find it difficult to get into a London Type. Why make life harder for
people who already live in pain?
Taxi drivers play a major part in transporting disabled persons and we would like to carry on doing so, but many of us will be prevented from this rewarding aspect of our business by this unnecessary legislation.
We have been transporting the disabled for many years, without legislation or fuss.
Politicians tend to rush headlong in to these blanket bans or 100% this or 100% that, without considering the full consequences of total 100% half-baked ideas.
Wheelchair access is important of course. But we must not sacrifice the transport needs of other disabled people or elderly persons of this country in the rush to be politically correct.
Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Unfortunately Bristol City Council has decided to bring the 100% wheelchair accessible taxi date forward to 2008. So the elderly of Bristol will be the first to suffer the consequences of this ill-conceived legislation. The very people who are in most need of taxis will be the ones who will prevented from using them
Let us hope that someone will see sense before it is too late.
M W Maddock.
abristol@taxidriver.fsnet.co.uk
www.taxidriver.fsnet.co.uk
* 2012 nationally.
*2 Department of the environment, Transport and the regions, Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee (Resolving Conflicts.){9 November 2000}