“The Journey to Equality” Behind RIA’s latest report

Sam Bemment, Technical and Innovation Advisor at RIA, is the author of the newest release of a series of industry thought-leadership reports produced by the association. 
The report, titled ‘The Journey to Equality: Creating a Railway for All’, has a foreword from Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson DBE, Life Peer and former Paralympic Athlete, who recognises that whilst the report is an opportunity to highlight the challenges disabled people face, it also has readily available solutions from suppliers that can be implemented to improve accessibility and the journeys of countless individuals.

In the report’s preface, Sam states: “Authoring this report has been the hardest to date… hearing the experiences of those that our industry has collectively failed, ignored, and at times, dehumanised, is humbling.”

Speaking exclusively to me at RIA’s Innovation conference in Wales, Sam explains where the inspiration for the report came from and what he hopes the industry will gain from it:

“When we did the paper about rail retail last year, we interviewed a lot of people who used the railway, but also potential passengers who were put off using the railway because of ticketing and retail being difficult and sometimes threatening. For example, if there’s a ticket inspector coming down the carriage and you don’t know if you’ve bought the right ticket, etc.

“It turned out there was a whole section of society who really wanted to use the railway, who were being prevented from doing so by various things such as a lack of level-boarding or a lack of information about whether the railway was accessible, all leading to an overwhelming lack of confidence.

“We met a lot of people at during the production of that paper who really wanted to be railway customers but couldn’t be for these various reasons. So, we discussed it internally at RIA and thought, actually, this is really important: The rail industry spends so long trying to increase ridership by one percent or change the service, but there is a whole group of people who currently can’t use our product. So, would it not be better to ensure that the railway could be used by everybody and explore what would come from that?

“There’s a lot of research out there to show even level-boarding puts passenger numbers up by a certain percentage. The simple act of putting in level-boarding is not just about wheelchairs but also means parents with prams or people with suitcases going to the airport. By accommodating all these customers we can see an increase in ridership that offsets the cost of putting in level-boarding and it’s better for everybody.”

Read “The Journey to Equality: Creating a Railway for All” here.