Doug Paulley's blog

Disabled people aren’t able to book train wheelchair spaces directly; we have to get A Rail Employee Human to do it. Doing so is ridiculously difficult.

Non-disabled people can book their seats on trains considerably more easily. But wheelchair users have to book the space as part of an Assistance Booking, for ramp provision and so on; and that ISN’T easy.

Traditionally, disabled people have had to make such bookings either by phoning up (which isn’t great for people with e.g. hearing impairment) OR by filling in a web form and waiting (which isn’t great because it isn’t interactive i.e. one has to wait and see if the wheelchair space has been booked; also because requests made via these forms routinely go AWOL.)

TransReport app

So enter TransReport. This small startup set up a partnership with Rail Delivery Group (RDG) and started developing an app that was supposed to Sort All Our Assistance Problems Out In One Fell Swoop.
The app was to include revolutionary features, as advertised in this Sociable post:

“With the push of a button, rail staff can get to you quickly and easily – just wait for assistance to come to you,” says Founder Jay Shen

The staff member can even message the passenger and vice versa, so the staff member has a name too.

Since the staff and passenger can message each other, time can be addressed when schedules change or a mistake is made and Plan B is needed.

Through GPS tracking down to the metre, staff and passengers can be located easily.

Coming to all UK rail and train stations by June 2018.

Delay

Needless to say, as with everything RDG do (cf. the “Universal Ramp“, Station Information and rail replacement accessibility) the app was delayed by years, stunted in functionality and fundamentally broken.

June 2018 came and went with no sign of the app. So did June 2019, and then June 2020.

In Autumn 2020, TransReport took over the back-end database of assistance bookings. This database contains the approximately 1.25 million (pre-pandemic) assistance bookings made on the UK rail network each year. It has a user interface that allows staff at train operating companies’ call centres to check station accessibility, book wheelchair spaces and seats etc. and make assistance bookings. This information then (theoretically) gets transmitted to rail staff on trains and stations to provide the booked assistance.

After raising £2.3 million in venture capitalist funding for their app, TransReport finally launched their app on 25th May 2021 – nearly 3 years late.

Stunted and broken features

This much-delayed app doesn’t have many of the promised revolutionary features.

• No facility to allow staff and passengers to contact each other
• No facility to know assistance staff names or what they look like
• No facility for communicating changes when disruption or mistakes occur
• No GPS tracking of the passenger.

There’s also no facility for booking a ticket; a fairly fundamental failure, in my opinion.

It doesn’t allow interactive booking of the wheelchair space; in fact, it makes no mention of booking wheelchair spaces at all.

Its sole benefit seems to be that it is (supposedly) a one-stop place to book passenger assistance, without having to work out whom to contact, with a comparatively accessible interface (thanks to the input of some excellent disabled rights activists) and with the passenger’s assistance needs and biographical details pre-filled in without having to redo them for each booking. This is a benefit, but nothing like that promised all those years ago, and sadly those benefits are offset by some significant problems.

Wheelchair space booking functionality broken

TransReport and RDG have really dropped the ball on this one, and stuffed wheelchair users up royally. What’s more, they won’t admit this fault and haven’t sorted it since they have been aware…

Since TransReport took over the database and backend last Autumn, I have experienced repeated and significant problems booking wheelchair spaces. Time and again I have attempted to book such spaces on LNER, particularly in 1st Class, only to be faced by “computer says no“. Over the phone (via Text Relay), web chat or email, LNER or Northern say: “sorry, the computer said that the wheelchair space was available but on attempting to book it, in actual fact, it seems the space has already been booked by somebody.“

After the first few times I was told this, I began to smell a rat. Were both First Class wheelchair spaces on each of four consecutive trains between York and Newcastle really booked up, three months in advance, during a pandemic?! Following much pressure and investigation, Northern and LNER eventually found out that the wheelchair spaces were NOT reserved. Wheelchair spaces simply weren’t reservable, because of TransReport’s software glitch. On actually travelling, I confirmed that the spaces had NOT been reserved by others and were indeed available to me

Each time that I attempt to book a wheelchair space, I experience the same problem. Multiple months after the first time it happened, it is still an issue. Eventually, LNER and Northern conducted investigations.

TransReport’s user interface was and is illegitimately refusing wheelchair space bookings, whilst other, older systems still allow them. So TransReport’s systems will tell train operating company employees that the wheelchair space isn’t available, and refuse to book it – then the older “Journey Planner” and “Portal” systems still allow rail employees to book the same space on the same train. Yet rail staff are instructed they must use the new TransReport system; and anyway many don’t have access to the older systems, or even know that this glitch exists.

To me, this is a pretty big failure. A system specifically designed to facilitate disabled people’s travel, in mandatory use across the country (inflicted on disabled people and on train operating companies whether we want it or not), has some fundamental bug preventing the booking of train wheelchair spaces – whereas the older systems still allow such.

I think what’s worse is that nobody at TransReport or RDG noticed this bug. Not during alpha or beta testing, in user and staff trials, and not in six months of operation. Their system was merrily refusing wheelchair users access to unoccupied wheelchair spaces for several months – and nobody noticed.

Only when LNER and Northern investigated the failure (at my prompting) was the issue brought to light. In the first week of June, RDG was shown that the system wouldn’t allow wheelchair space bookings whereas the older systems would. Yet:

• TransReport and RDG refused to acknowledge the bug
• the bug is still present three weeks later and is still preventing wheelchair space bookings

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions as to what this says about the competence of the two organisations and the priority they place on wheelchair users’ right to travel.

Other bugs and problems

The app doesn’t make clear anyway that it can be used to request a wheelchair space booking. The options listed – “Use of ramp, Room for Assistance Dog, Seat Transfer, Use of Station Buggy / Wheelchair, Help Pushing Wheelchair or Help with Luggage” – don’t include “Book Wheelchair Space“. There’s no mention in the app at all about booking the space, nor does their website say how to request one, despite my multiple suggestions to TransReport that they include such.

They’ve subsequently had to tweet to inform people:

Other problems include:

• if Train Operating Companies don’t mark a disabled person’s journey as “Completed” (which they never do) then the journey hangs around forever in the “Current Journeys” bit of the app.
• the app and backend quite happily allows nonsensical bookings. For example, they allow booking assistance on and off the Underground (which can’t actually be booked), booking train ramps to be provided to board rail replacement coaches, or wheelchair spaces and ramps to be booked for stations that are only accessible by several flights of stairs
• the back-end generates a multitude of confusing “unconfirmed,” “confirmed” and “altered” email confirmations to passengers
• the app makes no warning when passengers make booking requests at impossible short notice, e.g. for a train in 5 minutes – which can never be actioned because:
• a rail employee has to confirm each assistance and/or wheelchair space booking request. This often doesn’t happen. When it does, it also means that all the old problems with booking failures are still very much in evidence.

So the app and its backend isn’t the massive step forward we were all promised. It is a much-delayed, massive disappointment, with limited new functionality and with new bugs that prevent many disabled people from travelling.

South Western Railway cluster****

Next month I intend on seeing friends in Farnham. So today I attempted to book the journey back home via the app. I made the booking request at 16:27, and included the following seemingly helpful comments:

Wheelchair space. 1st Class where available.

NB: first class wheelchair space may not be available between Leeds and Harrogate either direction – short platform at Harrogate. If so, please book the standard class wheelchair space Leeds to/from Harrogate and the first class wheelchair space Harrogate to/from King’s Cross, with transfer between at Leeds.

Transreport has difficulties with booking wheelchair spaces, you may need to use Journey Planner / Portal.

I can manage steep ramps at Farnham.

My booking request was reviewed by somebody at South Western Rail, who confirmed my booking at 17:25. This generated a booking confirmation email to me. Said confirmation made clear that no wheelchair space booking had actually been made, despite my request.

My note above was copied verbatim into the booking multiple times. The agent had also booked me assistance onto/off London Underground, with train ramps and with the same note requesting wheelchair space booking…

The booking was clearly full of errors and not valid. So I sighed, girded my loins and phoned up SWR Assisted Travel via TextRelay (for deaf people.)

The call lasted over an hour, and I still don’t have a usable booking.

Here’s the transcript of the call. It’s long, infuriating but sort of cruelly entertaining. (I’ve removed my date of intended travel and a couple of pieces of identifying info.)

SWR Call Transcript

TL;DR

South Western Railway:

• couldn’t find my assistance booking
• thought that the text I had typed requesting the wheelchair space booking, was actually text written by the person confirming the booking
• put me on hold multiple times, for a total of about 45 minutes
• claimed my assistance booking hadn’t been made and was still awaiting staff confirmation, when in fact it had been made and confirmed
• hadn’t made any wheelchair space bookings as requested
• then booked me standard class when I had requested first
• claimed that them searching for my booking would have resulted in me receiving a “Booking Alteration” email
• suddenly and markedly changed their tone when I said I would go to legal
• claimed there wasn’t enough time left in the evening to sort my assistance booking (their service advertises itself as open 24/7 363 days a year…)
• then asked me to wait a further hour on hold
• gave me the silent treatment
• had requested assistance on London Underground that cannot actually be provided
• booked me the wrong trains at the wrong times despite me having given the details in the original booking request and again on the phone
• told me that the 1st Class wheelchair spaces were unavailable when this is in fact due to TransReport’s glitch
• were unable to overcome the glitch and actually make the booking, at the end of it all – and had to promise to contact me again tomorrow.

All that extra stress…

…to attempt to do what a non-disabled person can do in seconds on their website: make the bookings and practical arrangements to secure their accommodation and travel. It’s quite simply not on, is it?

The above is one small example of the myriad of issues disabled people including me experience when we try and travel: the assistance/wheelchair space booking process is fundamentally broken, causing immense stress, and wasting a huge amount of disabled people’s time and energy, for something that non-disabled people take for granted and which takes seconds.

Legal

The above is obviously morally reprehensible, but it also shouldn’t be like this under the industry’s regulatory and legal obligations.

This booking experience is directly contrary to the Office of Rail and Road’s regulations, and the Department for Transport franchising / Emergency Recovery Measures Agreements.

It’s also illegal under the Equality Act. TransReport, Rail Delivery Group and South Western Railway are service providers under a duty to make reasonable adjustments to practices that make it unreasonably difficult for wheelchair users and other disabled people to access their services, i.e. to travel. They’re also under a duty to provide effective auxiliary services if needed by disabled people.

The (apposite!) precedent in Roads v Central Trains Limited [2004] EWCA Civ 1541, (2004) 104 ConLR 62 states:

the policy of the Act is not a minimalist policy of simply ensuring that some access is available to the disabled: it is, so far as reasonably practicable, to approximate the access enjoyed by disabled persons to that enjoyed by the rest of the public.

Non-disabled people can book their tickets, practical arrangements and seats in seconds, reliably, without difficulty and automatedly, via a number of channels and without requiring human intervention. RDG, TransReport and South Western Rail could make the same possible for disabled people. Why don’t they?

Their failure to do so has caused me significant detriment – wasted my time, made me very angry and I STILL haven’t got the arrangements booked.

Actions required

So, TransReport, Rail Delivery Group and South Western Rail: this blog post constitutes a Letter before Action within the meaning of Section 6 of the Practice Direction: Pre-action Conduct and Protocols.

Unless you comply with my reasonable requirements as specified below within 14 days of this blog post being published, I shall take you to Court with no further notice.

Said requirements consitute:

1. 1. An open admission that you have discriminated against disabled people through your failure to make your wheelchair space and assistance booking processes easy and reliable.
   2. Legally binding undertakings to remedy these problems, within a specified, prompt timescale. Such undertakings to include:
      • To sort the bug that is preventing rail assistance booking staff from making some wheelchair space reservations via TransReport’s user interface.
      • To implement a system enabling wheelchair users to book available train wheelchair spaces interactively and without requiring rail staff intervention.
      • To sort the multiple other bugs and limitations with the TransReport app and back-end
   3. Compensation commensurate with the precedent set in Vento, as amended.

Addendum

My criticisms of the TransReport app and booking process above are in no way intended as a criticism of the many excellent disabled people who (like me) provided their input and expertise in an attempt to make it as accessible and useful as possible for disabled people. The failures are squarely in Rail Delivery Group’s and TransReport’s lane. I know that the app is a sight more accessible and usable than it would have been without disabled people’s input – and would be even more so if Rail Delivery Group had actually listened.

As the booking is processed further, I shall either add the ongoing situation below or in the blog’s comments.

Addendum next day

A flurry of automated emails from SWR, TransReport and LNER; amongst which:

Your seat reservation in first class from London Kings Cross to Leeds is M:20 has been booked via LNER and the reference that relates to your seat only is; VDXXXXXX, then your journey from Leeds to Harrogate is booking reference PA-XXXXXXXX and, your seat number A02 in standard class and again, your booking reference for the seat only is RTXXXXXX.

(What they mean is, the WHEELCHAIR SPACES have been booked; not seats. Good job I know that isn’t it! Once again, something that could puzzle and concern wheelchair users.)

I feel like I’ve won the blooming lottery! Finally what looks like the actual assistance booking I had requested – it only took an hour on the phone, determinedly knowing the system better than the employees I was speaking to and doggedly refusing to accept anything other than the correct booking. For something that non-disabled people can do in seconds with no stress or arcane knowledge required.

My outward journey is still “Unconfirmed”, however – LNER haven’t processed my booking request sigh.

It has gone over 24 hours without being confirmed, so I used LNER’s Live Chat to get the booking confirmed. This took 10 minutes. Here’s the transcript.

LNER Chat Transcript

tl;dr

LNER said that they hadn’t confirmed my assistance and wheelchair space booking, 28 hours after I made it via the app, because “We were just making sure that everything was correct for you.“

I don’t believe this, frankly. They are required to accept assistance bookings with 6 hours notice; why would they leave it 28 hours? If, however, it really is the case that they intentionally left it until I contacted them before they confirmed the booking, then it is a blooming good job that the wheelchair space I needed wasn’t reserved by somebody else in the meantime. Also, how was I to know that I had to get in contact in order for it to be confirmed? and why should I have to? It doesn’t make sense.

It also sounds like they had the usual TransReport Passenger Assist wheelchair space booking glitch: “My colleague who was booking the assistance has had to book E19, E18 for you.“

Booking completed

Finally, 28 hours after I requested the assistance via the app, after speaking to SWR for over an hour and LNER for a further 10 minutes, after chasing two train operating companies because they failed to follow the procedures and thus stuffed up the assistance booking, and after I explained to staff how to achieve the actual bookings because their systems are fundamentally broken, I finally have valid assistance and wheelchair space booking for both the outward and return portions.

All to achieve something that non-disabled people can do in seconds and with minimal / no stress.

I feel like I’ve won the blooming lottery.

And the next day…

An email from LNER:

We’re just letting you know that we’ve got everything sorted for your next journey. I have booked you onto the earlier service of 10:05 on XX July, between Leeds and Kings Cross as, regrettably, the First Class wheelchair space wasn’t available on the 10:45 service.

I obviously spoke too soon: having thought that the booking was finally sorted, somebody has booked duplicate assistance and wheelchair space on an earlier train. In addition to the existing correct booking already made.

Goodness knows where this duplicate came from. He evidently didn’t check whether the booking had already been actioned; also evidently got the TransReport first class wheelchair space booking bug, didn’t realise that all the wheelchair spaces on my intended train are in first class; and didn’t bother booking the rest of my journey to Farnham.

What a mess. For Goodness’ sake. Now I have to cancel this duplicate booking, which I never asked for in the first place.