The U.K. is outfitting its rail travel to be more friendly to passengers with disabilities, installing a guided path for blind or partially sighted passengers in their busiest interchange station, Clapham Junction, which has been promoted by the managing director, who made the walk blindfolded with a guide dog to draw attention to the new addition to the station.
The new path will help visually-disabled people use the station footbridge, which links the new entrance in Brighton Yard to the platform stairs. The entire station is now equipped with step-free access, delivering major improvements for the more than 40 million passengers who use the station every year.
The guided path makes use of tactile paving, creating a textured ground surface with indicators on the tiling of the footbridge to help pedestrians who can't see the path orient themselves. They also added Braille signs.
Tim Shoveller, the Managing Director for the South West Trains-Network Rail Alliance, took a challenge of being blindfolded to try out the new footbridge. He had the assistance of a guide dog and the members of the Guide Dog Mobility Team from London. They are a group that promotes guide dog services and campaigns across the London area.
"This is the first time a U.K. station has been equipped with a guided path," Shoveller said. "It is a welcome improvement and will make a real difference to many of our passengers.
"I was keen to try out the blindfolded walk so I could understand how partially sighted people use our stations," he said about the promotional stunt. "It has helped to give me a real insight into understanding what it is like to move around our stations without vision. Taking part in this exercise has really helped me to focus on what issues we need to be looking at and how to keep improving in the future."
"This is a fantastic step towards making a complex station much more accessible for blind and partially sighted passengers," said John Welsman, the Policy Business Partner at Guide Dogs, who is responsible for Travel and Transport related issues and is also visually disabled. "As a guide dog owner myself, I can now navigate the over bridge at the station with much more confidence, knowing that I can get to the right platform with the aid of the tactile and Braille signs at the top of each stairwell."
This latest improvement was in addition to the creation of a step free entrance that was opened in May 2011 and the elevators, all aiming to make the station more accessible for those with reduced mobility.
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