The 'unconscionable' state of Australia's train stations

Updated

A girl in a wheelchair watches a train go passed her.

Adam Bowes wishes he could use his wheelchair when he travels into the city, his prosthetic legs cause crippling back pain.

But the 24-year-old actor and double amputee from Sydney's south-west knows the excruciating pain far outweighs the nightmare of trying to navigate the city's train network in a wheelchair.

The stares he gets are bad enough. He recently bought a t-shirt that says 'Are you staring at me because I am an amputee or because I'm awesome?'. That helped a bit.

But it's the stairs at the stations that cause him the biggest grief. Like the time the lift at his local stop broke down while he was on his way to work in the city.

Station guards told him go around the other side of the station — a dangerous, half-an-hour trip for Bowes in his wheelchair.

"I just thought it'd be easier if they took the wheelchair up and I crawled up the stairs. So I had to get out of my wheelchair and get onto my stumps and hands and just crawl my way up because that was the only way I was getting to work on time," he said.

"I was really just frustrated about it because it shouldn't have to happen."

It's a frustration shared among the 1.6 million Australians living with a disability who use public transport, because large swathes of the country's train networks are inaccessible to them.

You're missing out...

There are around 960 train stations across Australia.

By the end of 2017, each state was supposed to have ensured that 90 per cent of their stations met accessibility standards.

By 2022, 100 per cent of the stations are supposed to be accessible.

Piecing together publicly available station information and data supplied by transport authorities, ABC News found that more than one in four stations in Australia is not independently accessible.

Meaning if you're in a wheelchair, have mobility issues or even use a pram, chances are you can't use around 270 stations in Australia. The main issue with those stations is steps. According to ABS data, 40 per cent of people who reported difficulties using public transport in Australia had issues with steps.

But that's only part of the picture. Many accessibility issues people face can often be less obvious and harder to identify.

We conducted a survey and received more than 1300 responses from a wide range of Australians affected by accessibility ranging from the elderly, people living with disabilities or temporary injuries and pram users.

The survey highlighted accessibility issues at a further 179 stations across Australia.

87 had issues with lifts being out of order.

A further 70 had issues with ramps being too steep.

10 had car parking issues.

Other issues included lack of audible announcements at stations, poor signage and issues with adequate staffing at stations.

Let's take a look at the stations in each state.

About 37 per cent of Western Australia's metro and regional train services are not independently accessible.

In New South Wales, the figure is closer to 44 per cent.

While 44 per cent of stations across the Queensland network are also inaccessible.

All stations in Victoria can be accessed independently except for one and South Australia was the only state to not provide any information on its services, but its website suggests all stations are accessible for people with mobility issues.



It's important to note that even though stations are listed as independently accessible it does not necessarily mean they are compliant with federal transport standards. Victoria, for example, has conducted audits of its stations and identified issues at numerous stations across the network.

At St Peters station in Sydney's inner-west there are no lifts, only steps down to the platform.

Alice, who only wanted to give her first name, can see the stop from her house but can never use it. She only recently started using a wheelchair as a result of a severe neuro-immune disorder. Her closest accessible station is too far away for her.

"This means I cannot travel independently or easily in Sydney. I have to use Ubers (who sometimes refuse to take wheelchairs)," she said.

"This is extremely expensive and not sustainable. These accessibility issues combined with my illness mean that I rarely leave the house and never independently."

It's not only those in wheelchairs who feel the effects of inaccessibility on public transport. The elderly, for example, can struggle with both steps and steep, long ramps.

People who live with vision impairments struggle to read poorly thought out colours on station screens.

Western Australians Jason Alford and his family are profoundly deaf. They have issues using the Perth train network when live audio announcements are made to signal changes.

"We won't be aware of that. Changes in platforms, train cancellations and also the emergency system is all in audio, nothing is accessible for deaf people," he said.

Is your station accessible?

These are just a small portion of the hundreds of stories from commuters who took the ABC News survey.

The issues they face are wide and varied but if there's a common thread among them, it's one of frustration.

Frustration with state governments and rail operators who many people living with disabilities feel are not prioritising transport accessibility. Frustration, they can't get an answer about when local stations will be upgraded. Frustration in having to struggle with such a vital part of their lives that discriminates against them.

"Today, in 2018 it's just unconscionable that we still don't have cities, towns, communities accessible for everybody, including accessible public transport," said Matthew Bowden, co-chief executive of People with Disability Australia.

Australia has had laws governing accessibility on all forms of public transport since 2002 — they're called the Disability Standards for Accessible Public Transport and form part of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).

The standards spell out what constitutes accessibility both on transport and at the stations they service.

They contain targets set out in a timeline for states to get their transport up to scratch. By 2012, 55 per cent of stations were supposed to be compliant with standards such as lifts, stairs, access paths and ramps.

By 2017, that increased to 90 per cent, with a target of 100 per cent compliance by 2022. But many rail operators are nowhere near hitting those goals for wheelchair access let alone requirements for providing things such as adequate toilet facilities, handrailing or lighting.

That's not good enough, according to Australia's Disability Discrimination Commissioner Alastair McEwin.

"What we are seeing practically is transport providers ignoring the law in the sense that they feel it doesn't matter. That they feel people with disabilities don't have the same rights as those without disability," he said.

There is a process by which people living with disabilities can hold rail operators to account, but according to disability advocates it's a burdensome, time consuming and potentially costly process.

Individuals or advocacy organisations can lodge their own complaints through the Australian Human Rights Commission which is then assessed before being assigned to an officer who can investigate and start a conciliation process. If the matter can't be resolved or is terminated, it can go to the Federal Court and the individual must take on the transport operator and risk wearing hefty legal costs in the event of a loss.

A review of the transport standards did suggest a change to this process. That was in 2007 and the system remains unchanged.

Australia's Disability Discrimination Commissioner thinks a watchdog to oversee the progress of the states in upgrading stations could help.

"Whether it be an independent federal body or state body, we absolutely need to see more of a compliance regime. Until we have that people will be forced to rely on individual complaints."

When the transport standards were introduced in 2002, Jacqui Facaris would have been five years old.

Changes have been made in her lifetime to improve access to transport, but for Facaris, a wheelchair user from Sydney's west, the changes are happening at a snail's pace and it's affecting her life.

"Being in a wheelchair you already feel very disabled because people can see you're disabled. But when you're having to plan out every single detail of your trip because of your wheelchair it makes you feel more disabled," she said.

"Australia can do better. It confuses me how in this day and age accessibility isn't a priority and nobody is calling anyone out on it."

The ABC asked the state transport authorities what they were doing to improve accessibility.

Public Transport Victoria said it was committed to improving accessibility for all passengers and that it was upgrading the state's infrastructure to create an accessible network. Queensland Rail said it was upgrading stations as part of its $300 million station upgrade program.

WA's Public Transport Authority said it was a leading provider of wheelchair-accessible public transport and that making public transport infrastructure DDA compliant was costly and would take time to deliver.

Transport for NSW said "the NSW Government is committed to making public transport accessible for customers with a disability, less mobile customers, travellers with luggage and parents with prams".

The Federal Department of Infrastructure said it would be releasing an issues paper on August 31 relating to the third review of the transport standards.

Matthew Bowden, from People with Disability Australia, said it was time for governments to stop seeing people with disabilities as a low priority on their agendas and speed up station upgrades.

"It cuts people off in terms of social isolation, cuts people off from opportunities and then really keeps a lot of people in a poverty trap where you can't get to work," he said.

"It's absolutely time, we've got the money we just need the political will to get down and do the job."

Credits

Notes about this story:

Where accessibility data was not provided by rail operators, it was collected from their publicly available websites. Data in those cases is as up-to-date at the operator's website.

Topics: disabilities, health, government-and-politics, federal-government, qld, australia, vic, sa, nsw, wa

First posted