> who has arrived at their destination safely on Friday night.
Big “he paid the fine” energy.
See, the things is, will he help pay bills of staff off sick because they’ve done their back in helping him up the stairs? Or, say they drop him or stumble and injure him, who’s the first person he’ll blame and sue.
They need to wear a high vis to move rolling stock
[deleted]
It’s an appalling situation to put someone in, but on the face of it, it’s hardly fair to blame the station staff. It’d have been a much bigger headline if they’d tried to help the passenger up the stairs and ended up dropping him back down.
I’d like to think that they were actually hastily trying to arrange pretty the only thing that they could – get him back on a train to the next station for a taxi back, or whatever other options there were. I know of at least one recent case where a train, unexpectedly replatformed into a platform with no step-free access, ended up doing an unplanned shunt to another platform to get a wheelchair user off the station safely.
The failings here are almost certainly higher up the tree.
Timing of this story sure is convenient, eh?
Absolutely disgusting what happened to this guy.
Slightly off topic, I feel this story is trying to show rail staff in a negative light to get them angry and against the rail strikes are pending at the moment.
I mean, it wasn’t the staffs job. All well and good blaming them but this guy isn’t small. wheelchairs are not light. Carrying someone of his weight up stairs would be crazy. It’d be viral on Facebook before the end of the day, too! Possibly costing people their jobs because they didn’t carry him right.
Absolutely agree things should be accessible but I don’t blame the staff in this situation one bit.
The state of this sub when people are actually defending the jobsworth rail staff!
Rail workers strike.
Oh look a story that makes rail workers seem bad.
What a surprise.
The real problem is why no other members of the public helped him once it was established the workers couldnt.
Dropping a disabled man down some stairs and breaching policy would be a worse story and people would be calling for their heads.
Think it’s a bit unfair to say “access shouldn’t be a privilege”, as that wasn’t the case.
The lift was broke, which was very unfortunate. If the lift didn’t exist, then it would be “access shouldn’t be a privilege”.
I don’t understand why there isn’t a back up plan to get wheelchair people off the platform when a lift is out of action.
There are stair climbing chairs that could be deployed. Sure the staff might have failed this man (most of the platform staff at my local station couldn’t carry me up stairs) but the station operator should put things in place rather than just say “lifts are out of order sorry”
I am going to defend the railway staff here.
A few weeks back I had to make an important train journey to hospital, I am a wheelchair user, I prebooked assistance at both ends of my journey where the staff would assist me with a ramp to get on the train, then meet me at the other end with a ramp to assist me off of the train.
(Y*ou can prebook assistance via an app for all train journeys in the UK, which also checks all stations you stop at or interchange at for things like lifts not working on the day of your travel and advise you of the alternative routes if there is an issue, it does this in real time, so if this guy had used the app he would have known about the lift issue and been rerouted or alternative transport provided*)
It worked perfectly getting on the train but at the other end they failed to meet me and I would have been stuck on the train until it got to the end of the line EXCEPT when the driver realised no-one was there to meet me, he got out of his cab and helped me to get off of the train.
Unfortunately it’s usually against company policy to physically help wheelchair users. If the staff injure themselves they aren’t covered & if the wheelchair user gets injured then the staff would probably face a disciplinary and possibly lose their job, especially if it puts the company in bad light.
16 comments
> who has arrived at their destination safely on Friday night.
Big “he paid the fine” energy.
See, the things is, will he help pay bills of staff off sick because they’ve done their back in helping him up the stairs? Or, say they drop him or stumble and injure him, who’s the first person he’ll blame and sue.
They need to wear a high vis to move rolling stock
[deleted]
It’s an appalling situation to put someone in, but on the face of it, it’s hardly fair to blame the station staff. It’d have been a much bigger headline if they’d tried to help the passenger up the stairs and ended up dropping him back down.
I’d like to think that they were actually hastily trying to arrange pretty the only thing that they could – get him back on a train to the next station for a taxi back, or whatever other options there were. I know of at least one recent case where a train, unexpectedly replatformed into a platform with no step-free access, ended up doing an unplanned shunt to another platform to get a wheelchair user off the station safely.
The failings here are almost certainly higher up the tree.
Timing of this story sure is convenient, eh?
Absolutely disgusting what happened to this guy.
Slightly off topic, I feel this story is trying to show rail staff in a negative light to get them angry and against the rail strikes are pending at the moment.
I mean, it wasn’t the staffs job. All well and good blaming them but this guy isn’t small. wheelchairs are not light. Carrying someone of his weight up stairs would be crazy. It’d be viral on Facebook before the end of the day, too! Possibly costing people their jobs because they didn’t carry him right.
Absolutely agree things should be accessible but I don’t blame the staff in this situation one bit.
The state of this sub when people are actually defending the jobsworth rail staff!
Rail workers strike.
Oh look a story that makes rail workers seem bad.
What a surprise.
The real problem is why no other members of the public helped him once it was established the workers couldnt.
Dropping a disabled man down some stairs and breaching policy would be a worse story and people would be calling for their heads.
Think it’s a bit unfair to say “access shouldn’t be a privilege”, as that wasn’t the case.
The lift was broke, which was very unfortunate. If the lift didn’t exist, then it would be “access shouldn’t be a privilege”.
I don’t understand why there isn’t a back up plan to get wheelchair people off the platform when a lift is out of action.
There are stair climbing chairs that could be deployed. Sure the staff might have failed this man (most of the platform staff at my local station couldn’t carry me up stairs) but the station operator should put things in place rather than just say “lifts are out of order sorry”
I am going to defend the railway staff here.
A few weeks back I had to make an important train journey to hospital, I am a wheelchair user, I prebooked assistance at both ends of my journey where the staff would assist me with a ramp to get on the train, then meet me at the other end with a ramp to assist me off of the train.
(Y*ou can prebook assistance via an app for all train journeys in the UK, which also checks all stations you stop at or interchange at for things like lifts not working on the day of your travel and advise you of the alternative routes if there is an issue, it does this in real time, so if this guy had used the app he would have known about the lift issue and been rerouted or alternative transport provided*)
It worked perfectly getting on the train but at the other end they failed to meet me and I would have been stuck on the train until it got to the end of the line EXCEPT when the driver realised no-one was there to meet me, he got out of his cab and helped me to get off of the train.
True story and I got it on video
https://youtu.be/56NGhIsxGGg
Unfortunately it’s usually against company policy to physically help wheelchair users. If the staff injure themselves they aren’t covered & if the wheelchair user gets injured then the staff would probably face a disciplinary and possibly lose their job, especially if it puts the company in bad light.
So you can’t really blame the front-line staff.
Yeah but of course staff deserve better pay
Oof, extra details are damning. https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/disabled-man-stranded-train-platform-staff-refused-to-help/