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If I’d stayed with BR for longer I


could have got free first class travel for life. I made a mistake there, didn’t I.


Lorna Slade spoke to Norman Baker MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport, about Access for All, staff at stations, the passenger voice in franchising, and running his own station


T


here are lots of rail experts at the Department for Transport, especially sitting in reception. During the short wait to be lead up to Norman Baker I learned a lot. ‘Now that Branson’s been so successfully rewarded for


an appeal who knows what’s going to happen…it’s had a dreadful impact on the whole industry…there’s so much at stake…such high sums involved…especially the fees to the merchant banks…’ Having met him now, I know the Minister would be very disappointed to hear such negativity. Quite charismatic, he is sharp and sure-footed with his facts and obviously undaunted by the presence of the three mandarins sitting with us, one writing down every word we said, and all poised ready to advise him. His polite but increasingly faintly annoyed tone in answering some of my ‘less positive’ questions left no doubt that he is fiercely proud of the rail industry and its achievements.


Initiatives such as the Station Commercial Projects Fund and Access for All are changing the landscape in terms of passenger usability and accessibility, but I wondered if there are still areas for improvement. ‘We’re always open to suggestion,’ said Baker,


course into the next control period with another £100 million pounds allocated. It’s making a real difference and when you combine that with the massive investment into new rolling stock and the requirement for all trains to be accessible by 2020 then you’ll have a situation where the railway is opening up to people for whom it was never open before, and that really warms me and it’s exciting I think.’


‘and are keen that the Toc’s provide some solutions as far as possible rather than the people in this room or somewhere else in this building determining what the best solutions are for each station hundreds of miles away. So in a sense it’s about setting high level objectives here, which I think we’re entitled to do as government - we want passengers to be more satisfied with rail, and we want to make sure disabilities are catered for - but we want to leave it to the rail companies to a large degree to determine how to achieve that, and it’s in their interests to do so. We’ve seen a transformation in recent years, not only in facilities at stations and the access available, but also of the mindset of those that work for the railway, which I think is massively improved from say 20 years ago.’


Access for All a success


Baker is rightly pleased with the Access for All scheme, a cross- party initiative started by Labour. ‘And we’ve extended it of


Page 44 September 2013


Access for All has indeed been so successful that the desire to trumpet it as a hugely positive aspect of station design must be tempting, but it has also brought a greater awareness of where complete accessibility might not exist. The disability campaign group Transport for All complained to the Advertising Standards Authority recently that Crossrail is claiming the new line will be an ‘accessible’ railway, when seven of its stations are not planned to have step free access. ‘Nearly all stations along the Crossrail route do’ said Baker, ‘and there are particular reasons why it was extraordinarily difficult to retrofit stations – all the new stations are fully accessible of course, but if you retrofit Victorian infrastructure then you are limited in what you can do. I’m pretty confident that the team has done what can sensibly be done.’


Phantom staff reductions?


A recent TUC Action for Rail campaign poll of 1,031 disabled people showed that more than a quarter had been ‘targeted’ at stations or on trains. Quoting TfL’s planned introduction of Driver Only Operation on the London Overground network, the union’s press release warned the loss of train guards and station staff over the next few years will deter the disabled from travelling. I wondered how, if true, this can be reconciled with the Access for All programme.


‘First of all I’m not quite sure what you mean by targeted?’ said Baker. ‘Abused…shouted at’ and at that he looked genuinely concerned. ‘Well I also chair a panel on Crime on Public Transport that involves not just train companies but bus companies, the BTP and so on, and we do identify best practice in that we want to make sure that everybody on the railway


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