please empty your brain below

Excellent DG, really made me smile. (Except I think you meant the Northern line isn't all white circles.)

I'm beginning to detect a pattern in posts like this which don't make any reference to yourself. Can we expect an account of a day out you took today tomorrow?

Could someone ask TfL to put toilet symbols on the map next please?

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/toilets-map.pdf

These would be really useful - and to many more people than disabled access issues.

*makes a sharp exit* ;)

In fairness there will be progressively more blue circles in the coming months and years, as platform humps are installed more widely.

CH

You'd have to have separate line diagrams for the carriages which line up with the humps and for those that don't!

And in some cases separate symols for each direction, for those stations where one platform has level access and the other doesn't.

Aren't you being just a little bit of an arse on this one?

If you have two similar-looking but different symbols that mean different things, of course you are going to highlight which one is which wherever possible.

It's part of teaching people what they mean and keeping uniformity throughout the system. Seems perfectly sensible to me.

Those damned platform humps. I nearly ended up in a wheelchair myself the week after they'd been installed at London Bridge. There's me stepping down off the train, the ground is virtually invisible under all the bodies and bags anyway, and WHAM! There I was braced for a four inch drop which wasn't there. The impact force went straight into my knees.

You know, you can interchange with other lines on the Northern Line, so it's not totally pointless to include it. Although to get step-free from Northern to Jubilee, you actually have to come up in the lift from the Northern Line at Borough High Street and go round on the surface to the Joiner Street entrance, with all the building works going on there for both The Shard and for the new railway line over Borough Market.

Timbo -

I think the idea is that the platform humps are installed for the same carriages on each platform! The Victoria line has had them all installed (yes, even for the stations with no lifts) and they line up with the middle two carriages. There is a little sign on the platform to indicate the level boarding area.

Now, why the humps have been installed where they have is of course another question. Especially at all the Victoria's cross-platform interchanges, where the other line hasn't had the same treatment (yet).

So TfL are pointlessly replacing tube maps on trains. I wondered why my fares were going up above inflation yet again next year.

Found myself wondering about this exact thing yesterday on the picadilly line, but managed to convince myself that I was being a bit slow and just couldn't find the blue cirlce that the key was differentiating between.



that should obviously say Piccadilly line.... now you can see why I assumed that I was being slow.

I am pleased that effort is being made to assist disabled people. I suspend judgement on whether it is the right sort of effort, but it is good to see that this highly disadvantaged demographic will be assisted in some way to secure one more aspect of modern citizenship. As said, my only caveat is that I hope that it is the most effective way possible given the difficult circumstances of Victorian architecture, etc.

Antipodean: yes, this is of genuine use, but not only to disabled people. also to the elderly and "mobility impaired".

DG: "Never mind. I still want a blue circle in the key, even if there isn't a blue circle on the map. It makes us look forward-thinking."

No: it makes people realise that a white circle is not the same as step free access onto the train.

Most disabled people can cope with a small step onto a train, but some can't and full marks to TfL for not forgetting them.


Excellent post again, DG!
It is much cheaper to print maps with blue circles and white circles, than to provide genuine step-free access. Let's just keep revising the maps to show we recognise the poor crips' needs. The crips will be grateful, won't they?
I am most grateful.
A crip.

@ Logistical - agreed re elderly and mobility impaired, in fact I made the same point in a previous comment on a previous post re this issue. It is also useful for us visitors with our far too heavy suitcases :).

@ Helen - it does seem that some progress is being made re step free access. Let's hope that this is merely incremental and not tokensitic.

@Antipodean, DG's blog of 9/9/11 covered the reality of 'step-free access' rather well. Harrow-on-the-Hill's lifts were cancelled in 2009.











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