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South-West of England, United Kingdom
I am a retired cartographer and have recently completed a degree course as a mature student reading History. My main hobby is narrow gauge railway modelling.

Wednesday 9 May 2012

Stratford Station Platforms

There has been a great fuss by the powers that be about how the 2012 London Paralympic Games will be the most accessible games ever!  Trouble is, it seems that most of these wise and wonderful people have no idea what so-ever what being disabled means. 
The Olympic Park is served by a number of railway lines and below I have listed the platforms we used this last week:
The Underground - Central Line westbound - acceptable - simple bunny-hop.
                                          eastbound - 30-40cms step up with gap - assistance required.
Jubilee Line - new platforms both okay
DLR - new platforms - excellent
Overground to Highbury and Islington - Impossible to get on without a ramp although with help it is possible to get off at Stratford.  We caused our return train to be late because of the time it took the conductor to find the ramp, get it out of the on-board cupboard, put it in place, then put it back into the cupboard!  A good example of the practice being far more complicated than the theory.

We did use a bus in Highbury and the driver was excellent in 'launching' the ramp out of the rear door, first attempt too far from pavement , so moved bus and repeated the exercise.  He then kept  a check on where we wanted to get off.

General Comment on the Central Line platforms.  Bearing in mind that the dimensions of the trains have been more or less the same for the past 75 years how come the heights of the platforms vary so much, some you step up, some you step down, some are fairly level but maybe at only one end.

CONCLUSION
There are only two parts of the London Public Transport System that I feel is fully wheelchair accessable and therefore is the only parts fully accessable to all, able and disable and I therefore award first-equal prize to the Docklands Light Railway and the Croydon Trams

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