Despite millions spent on making the capital's transport system more accessible, getting to the Games can be nerve-racking for disabled travellersTransport for London says it has invested hundreds of millions of pounds in making the capital's public transport system more accessible before the Paralympics, and on the opening day of the Games the network was tested by large numbers of disabled people travelling to the Olympic Park.Many people said they encountered friendly staff and surprising efficiency as they made their way to Stratford but some were met by the same unpredictable service and unhelpfulness from the general public that can make travelling around London in a wheelchair a nerve-racking experience.Becki McGuinness's complicated journey from her home in Southfields in south-west London (one bus trip, two tube trains, and the final stretch on the Docklands Light Railway) to the Olympic Park, went without any major problems, but was accompanied by an undercurrent of tension."I still find it very stressful. You panic about whether you are going to be able to get off where you are going," she said. She has used a wheelchair since developing osteosarcoma of the spine, a kind of bone cancer, as a teenager.Her mother, Susan McGuinness, who is her full-time carer and travels with her on any trips made by public transport, says she has a constant "knot in her stomach" whenever they are out together, wondering if the right stations will be open, and whether the lifts will be in order. She says very few people offer to help her; she has developed a tennis elbow from her caring responsibilities and sometimes the massive heave required to push the wheelchair up over the 20cm gap between the train and the platform is too much for her."Sometimes my mum is struggling to get me on, and people stare, but it's only once in a blue moon that anyone will say 'Do you want some help?'" Becki said.A guard at Southfields tube station calls out: "Are you all right?" The lift is working so everything is fine; they don't ask for a mobile ramp to be taken out, because it takes too long."Look how big the gap is," Susan says as the train draws in, but manages to manoeuvre the wheelchair into the carriage.When she finds a young man stretched out across the fold-up seats that are marked as a priority space for wheelchair users, Becki doesn't ask him to move, but squeezes her wheelchair awkwardly into a corner of the standing area and hopes that he will get up and give her the seat.Becki, 25, thinks that people retreat into a bubble when they get on the tube. "Their persona changes; they switch off; they don't talk to anyone," she says, with the consequence being that they don't register that they could be helping her.Three stops go past and the man doesn't move, and he seems oblivious to the hard stares of several other passengers, who let their eyes rest on him, and try to draw his gaze to the prominent disabled passengers sign to his right.People walk around the wheelchair with difficulty, but still the man doesn't move. Becki's mother, sister and niece who are travelling with her, glare at him, but also decide not to say anything."I tend to just weigh it up each time. I don't want to say anything in case he says something rude, or does something physical. Just in case," she says, glancing at the man, relaxed and leaning back into the seat. "You feel much more vulnerable travelling like this.""There's no way I could do a tube journey on my own," she says. "I couldn't physically do it ? I'd be too worried." But she has been helped in organising journeys and undertaking trips out of London by CLIC Sargent, a cancer charity that supports children and young people. She says it's very hit and miss whether fellow passengers will be helpful. "You get the impression that some people feel they have somewhere to get to in a hurry; they forget that we've got somewhere to get to as well."Accessibility problems in the underground system have annoyed some of the athletes. British wheelchair racer Hannah Cockroft said in an interview before the Games: "Am I allowed to swear? It's crap. It's really bad."She said there were too many tube stops that were not wheelchair-accessible. "If you don't want to get on or off at one of those stops then you're pretty much screwed."I think they've changed bits of it, and they have made it more accessible, just not as accessible as we'd like them to be."She said she was surprised about how few offers of help she got when travelling in her wheelchair. "People are not willing to help you, they're just not. I think that's ignorance, or maybe people feel awkward. I am very independent, but obviously there are things that you do need help with."Mark Evers, director of Games transport with Transport for London, said hundreds of millions of pounds had been spent recently to improve accessibility. All 8,500 of London's buses were now fully wheelchair-accessible, he said (with the exception of some heritage Routemaster buses, for tourists) and all taxis.The campaign group Transport for All is calling for the temporary manual wheelchair ramps installed in many tube stations, allowing wheelchair users to use their local station for the first time, to be kept there after the Games."We certainly want to keep them in place," Evers said, adding that he was looking at how to ensure that staff would always be available to help people on and off using the ramps. He said having 66 fully accessible stations out of a total of 270 across the tube network was "not as many as we would like, which is why we continue to work to make more stations step-free". Emphasising the huge improvements made in recent years, he added that it was expensive to adapt some central London stations because they were so deep, and because of the disruption it caused at pavement level.Some visitors on Thursday had come by taxi to avoid risking public transport with a wheelchair. Daphne Hermitage, 77, spent �50 on a taxi journey to the stadium from Essex and would spend another �50 to get home. "I wouldn't go by train. I'd be afraid I couldn't get on the train." Others said that the staff on the overground were "amazing, so friendly and helpful", and Michael Cogswell, who travelled in a wheelchair with his six-year-old daughter by high-speed rail from Ashford International in Kent, said he had had "the best journey possible ? a big change from everywhere else." Sandra McCullagh, who travelled from Dublin with her son, who uses a wheelchair, said her journey had been "very good; stress-free".The most common problem was with overcrowding in the wheelchair area on London's buses, where wheelchairs are meant to have priority but parents with prams often do not realise, and don't make way.Sarah Brown, a support worker who accompanied a friend in a wheelchair to the Olympic Stadium, said she had to argue with a bus driver in order to get on to a bus."We couldn't get on because there was a buggy. Parents have got a choice to fold up buggies; if you're in a wheelchair you don't have that choice. The drivers don't know the rules."Most people were very positive about access within the stadium. Vanessa Bancroft, who has ME, borrowed a mobility scooter on site to help her cover the distances. "The mobility service at the gate was so good. I wouldn't have been able to manage the walk," she said. David Pyall, from Leytonstone, who lost the use of his left side in a stroke, also borrowed a scooter. He said: "They've done a lot to try to make it accessible."But there was continuing unhappiness about families being unable to sit together in the wheelchair-accessible areas of the stadiums. Michael Cogswell, attending with his daughter, said tickets could only be bought in pairs, and seating appeared to be designed for a wheelchair user and a carer. "They have got that entirely wrong. I couldn't buy three tickets, so I couldn't come with my whole family."Travelling with disabilitiesParalympics 2012LondonDisabilityguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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