Comedian Francesca Martinez challenges rail industry’s disability ‘bolt-on’ culture: Francesca and Mark

Monday 11 Jul 2016

Comedian Francesca Martinez challenges rail industry’s disability ‘bolt-on’ culture

Region & Route:
National
  • 'Wobbly' comedian, Francesca Martinez, launches Network Rail campaign to improve journeys for disabled passengers, Spaces and Places for Everyone  
  • A quarter of disabled passengers say they worry about their journeys when travelling by train (24%)
  • Two-thirds of disabled people would feel confident using the rail network independently (63%)
  • Network Rail chief promises to challenge rail industry’s accessibility 'bolt-on culture'
  • Francesca Martinez interviews Network Rail chief executive

Renowned disabled comic, Francesca Martinez, has teamed up with Network Rail to launch a new campaign to improve disabled passengers’ experiences of travelling by rail after challenging its historic ‘bolt-on’ culture. With the number of railway passengers exceeding 1.6bn a year and two-thirds (67%) of disabled people saying they use the railway, Network Rail is launching its campaign, Spaces and Places for Everyone, to set out how it will make the railway more inclusive for every passenger.

  

Francesca, who has cerebral palsy but prefers to describe herself as “a bit wobbly”, often uses the train to travel around the country for her work as a stand-up comic. While she admits that she has seen a number of accessibility improvements to the railway in recent years, she says that at times she feels as though her needs are “invisible to the rest of society” and that accessibility has historically been a “bolt-on”.

According to research carried out by Populus and commissioned by Network Rail, it would seem that Francesca is not alone. Out of the two-thirds of disabled people who travel by train (67%), a quarter do not feel that their journey will be an easy one (24%), while a third (33%) said they would use the train more if it were more accessible to them.

Encouragingly though, two-thirds of people with a disability (63%) would feel confident using the rail network independently versus 79% of non-disabled people, while more than half of disabled people (58%) believe that accessibility across the rail network is improving despite there being more to do.

Commenting, Francesca Martinez said:

“As a disabled passenger, I often feel as though my needs are invisible to the rest of society and that sometimes people like me are seen as a burden rather than as valued passengers. Most people consider taking the train just a part of everyday life, but there are millions of people like me who need to carefully plan their journeys so they can get around without difficulty.

“This is why I am supporting Network Rail in its campaign to make the railway more suitable for the modern world and accommodating of every single passenger, regardless of their needs. It’s really reassuring that the millions of disabled people in Britain are being considered right from the very start before rail projects leave the drawing board rather than being bolted on as they have been in the past, which will make a huge difference to their rail experiences in the future.”

Mark Carne, chief executive at Network Rail said:

“Most of today’s railway was designed during the Victorian era when attitudes towards disability were very different. Since then, access for disabled people has been tagged on at a later stage, rather than being a part of the initial design strategy for our railway. We know it hasn’t been good enough in the past, and we need to make it easier for disabled people to plan journeys and travel by rail.

“We are committed to changing this, and doing what is necessary to make sure that inclusivity is deeply embedded in our culture. Only then will our railway be a place where everyone can travel equally, confidently and independently.”   

Network Rail, which is responsible for managing 20,000 miles of railway and some of Britain’s biggest and busiest stations, is committed to ‘inclusive design’ – which means putting all passengers at the heart of the design process rather than adding on provisions at a later stage . Inclusive design is already being delivered across its stations, including:

  • A dog ‘spending area’ at the recently rebuilt Birmingham New Street where guide dogs can ‘spend a penny’.
  • At Reading station, visually impaired people have the option of a special audio guide to help them navigate through the station and the town, thanks to a partnership with Microsoft.
  • Lifts and escalators to all platforms at the redeveloped London Bridge, the first half of which opens to passengers this summer.
  • Network Rail has set up the Built Environment Accessibility Panel which consists of disabled passengers who are also experts in inclusive design. The panel provides expert technical and strategic advice to our projects teams.

As part of the campaign, Network Rail invited Francesca to interview Mark Carne so she could find out first-hand what the company is doing to change the way it caters for disabled people. You can watch the interview here.

ends

Notes to Editors

Watch the full length Spaces and Places for Everyone video.

Other examples of how Network Rail is implementing inclusive design across its stations include:

  • Lifts in stations that are easy to find to assist disabled people, parents with buggies and passengers with luggage
  • Evenly distributed lighting to assist those who are visually impaired
  • Accessible, well signed and well-lit footbridges which encourage people to cross the track where it is safe to reduce the occurrence and fear of crime


Methodology

Populus interviewed 2,104 GB adults online between 8th-9th June 2016, recruited from their online panel of 130,000 UK adults. Quotas were set on age, gender, region and social grade. The data was then weighted to the known profile of Great Britain using age, gender, government office region, social grade, taken a foreign holiday in the last 3 years, tenure, number of cars in the household and working status, in order to bring the sample in line with the profile of the population. Populus is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules. For more details go to www.populus.co.uk

Contact information

Passengers / community members
Network Rail national helpline
03457 11 41 41

Latest travel advice
Please visit National Rail Enquiries

Journalists
Network Rail press office - Lisa Russell
Senior media relations manager
Network Rail
07734 649250
lisa.russell@networkrail.co.uk

About Network Rail

We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.

Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.

Follow us on Twitter: @networkrail
Visit our online newsroom: www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk