The year 2020 marks 25 years since the passing of the first Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). Shamefully, transport was entirely exempted from Part III of the Act, which outlawed discrimination against disabled people in accessing goods, facilities and services. The Department of Transport fought tooth and nail against including a general right of access to transport in the 1995 Bill (education was also initially excluded). The government saw the proposed DDA as a more business-friendly alternative to a rights-based approach to tackling disability discrimination through a Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill, such as proposed by Harry Barnes MP - and as supported by the disability rights movement.  Explaining the exclusion of transport (and education) from the Bill, Disability Minister William Hague said in March 1995 “we have had the good sense to allow that matters such as education and transport deserve to be treated in a different way.” (1)  

The government maintained this stance throughout the passage of the Bill.  In the House of Lords, on 22 May 1995, Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish (Minister of State, Department of Social Security) said “We have…made it clear that we believe that progress towards accessible public transport is best achieved by targeted action rather than by any kind of blanket legislation. Different modes of transport inevitably require different access solutions. A simple application of Part III to transport vehicles is not therefore appropriate." (2)

The government also initially rejected the more specific case for requiring minimum access standards for public transport vehicles. Defending this, William Hague had said in January 1995 “It is obvious nonsense to suggest that excluding transport vehicles from the Bill denies disabled people access to transport. The Government's record on initiatives in that area is second to none.” (3)

However, during the passage of the Bill, the Government was forced to accept what became Part V of the 1995 Act covering public transport, including powers to make access regulations about vehicles, carriage of passengers in taxis, etc. This resulted, among other things, in the Passenger Service Vehicle Accessibility Regulations (PSVAR) being introduced in the year 2000. 
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There have undoubtedly been significant improvements in public transport access in the past 25 years (look at how low floor buses have transformed much local travel) but many problems remain.  Although the second (2005) DDA put right the exemption of transport services generally from the ‘Part III provisions', the exclusion of transport in the 1995 Act cost disabled people a decade of improvements in access to transport; the consequences of which we still live with today.

However, blind people have expressed serious concerns about the concept of continuous pavements, which RNIB oppose. As the RNIB says, the problem is that they “pitch us, without warning, into a shared space without knowing it.”

The London Cycling Design Standards acknowledge these concerns, saying that continuous pavements “should currently be regarded as experimental in the UK. Further development of the concept is needed, in consultation with access groups, to determine acceptable approaches, given concerns over the lack of delineation between the footway and the area accessible to vehicles that runs over the entry treatment. Any proposal should be subject to an Equality Impact Assessment.” (P43)

So would the obvious design solution be to add tactile paving to continuous paving, to warn a visually impaired pedestrian that they are entering a space where they may encounter a vehicle? My hunch is that many advocates of continuous pavements would resist the use of tactile paving in such situations on the grounds that it would signal, to both pedestrian and driver, that walking priority is limited. Rather than walking across the side road with full confidence, a pedestrian should pause and check that vehicles aren’t turning into or out of the side road, undermining the ‘people over vehicles’ philosophy. Tactile paving also can inhibit the mobility of other disabled pedestrians, so it should not be over-used.​

But on many ordinary pavements, there is already a risk of encountering a vehicle every few yards - where there are driveways or garages. The reality is that many pavements are already ‘shared space’ to some degree, as is every crossing of a side road. Would anyone expect tactile paving to be installed every time a driveway crossed a pavement? (Saughton Road North, Edinburgh).

So, should continuous pavements have tactile paving? The answer is probably “it depends”. As with so many other aspects of street design, each site really needs to be designed specific to the context, especially taking account of traffic (volume and speed).

As the DfT is at last reviewing the woefully out of date guidance on ‘Inclusive Mobility’ and tactile paving it is timely to give this some serious thought. It would be useful to have detailed national guidance, based on both research and consultation on if, where and when tactile paving is required on a continuous pavement.

So the *total* number of injuries to pedestrians caused by collisions with cyclists is considerably higher than the ‘1%’ figure often quoted (for fatalities). I would imagine by a factor of at least 3; possibly as high as 5 or more?  Of course, this is still very low compared to crashes involving motor vehicles, which are overwhelmingly responsible for pedestrian (and cyclist) casualties. So does it matter if cycling accounts for 1%, 3% or 5% of pedestrian collisions? Yes, I think it does. 
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Firstly, selective cherry-picking of statistics discredits the basically sound argument that the  principal focus of road safety efforts should be on motor vehicles (rather than cyclists).

Secondly, we need to recognise the anxiety that cycling can cause pedestrians. While there seems to be little statistical or academic evidence on this, there can be no question that inconsiderate cycling - especially on pavements, or through pedestrian crossings - seriously intimidates many pedestrians; especially those who are blind, deaf, old or generally less confident and steady on their feet. Indeed, Peter Walker acknowledges in his video that pavement cycling can intimidate; but in the next breath describes it as “harmless”. 
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While it is wrong for the media and politicians to disproportionately focus on cyclists’ involvement in pedestrian collisions, it is also wrong for cycling advocates to simply dismiss the impact of inconsiderate cycling as negligible or irrelevant. A little more empathy from some cycling campaigners - such as on the lines of Suzanne Forup’s excellent recent blog  - would not go amiss; it might also do more to win wider public support for more investment in cycling.

There has been a lot of discussion about the number of buses on Edinburgh’s Princes Street, and the idea of removing some or all of them as part of moves to reduce traffic in the city centre. (See here for my thoughts on the subject). However, I’ve seen very little discussion about taxis. When private traffic on Princes Street was first restricted 20 odd years ago, most council officials wanted taxis banned entirely but after lobbying by the taxi trade, this idea was dropped. It would be timely to revisit the matter. 

​Thousands of taxis use Princes Street each day - my surveys suggested that they could form more more than a quarter of all vehicles on the street. But many taxis carry no passengers at all. I carried out a count of how many passengers occupied 50 taxis in the block between Frederick and Hanover Streets in half an hour on the morning of 2 April. Just over half the taxis passing had no passengers, with the driver either plying for hire, or off duty.  Only 9 (18%) carried more than one passenger. The average occupancy of all taxis was 0.7 people (excluding the driver, obviously). More detailed surveys of different parts of the street and at different times are needed to establish better data, but these results raise important questions. Is this an efficient way to move people in the city centre? Is this the best use of the premium space that is Princes Street? Removing taxis would reduce congestion and pollution, speed up buses and make cycling safer.​

Motability has been criticised again by the House of Commons Work and Pensions and Treasury Committees at evidence taken on 9 January. This follows publication of the recent report by the National Audit Office (NAO) which broadly endorsed the criticisms of executive pay, reserves and governance. Senior figures in both the Motability Charity and its commercial arm Motability Operations say they accept all the NAO recommendations - while appearing at the same time to justify all their actions. Some words used by MPs included “evasiveness”, “lack of transparency”, “defensiveness”. NAO’s head, Sir Amyas Morse, concluded his evidence by saying “there does need to be change”. 

Three observations: Firstly, risk management is fundamental to the business, and Motability Operations makes much of its “dynamic and robust approach” to managing risks (lots more like this screenshot in the Annual Report). So how didn't it spot the very obvious reputational and political risks currently resulting from its remuneration and reserves policies? They were surely not hard to foresee…

Local service buses again formed less than half of all traffic in Princes Street, with other significant vehicles including tourist buses and especially taxis. Many of these vehicles don’t stop at all on Princes Street, using it simply as a short cut thoroughfare. If reducing traffic on Princes Street is a key aim (as it appears to be as part of the ‘City Centre Transformation initiative’), wouldn't it make sense to look at removing such traffic first?​

Another thought on street clutter...although widely recognised as a significant problem for pedestrians (both because it reduces the available space for walking and because it can represent a serious hazard for some people, most obviously those with visual impairments) what is less widely acknowledged is the apparent effect that street clutter has on attracting other clutter.

The Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT) has announced its programme of annual awards for 2018. Unfortunately there is no category this year for ‘reducing street clutter’ as in 2017. This award was a very welcome initiative in view of the publication of the new Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions (TSRGD, or ‘Traffic Signs Regs’) in 2016. 

To those unfamiliar with this less-than exciting sounding document, this is the statutory guidance which governs when and where road signs are required. The guidance states ” the number of traffic signs has doubled in the past 20 years. This is unsustainable, and bears out the need to reduce signing wherever possible. A culture change is needed in the way signing is used” (2.9).​

During his recent work in Edinburgh (1) the influential Danish urban designer Jan Gehl reportedly described Princes Street as a “big bus station”. Certainly, the pedestrian environment is dominated by traffic, which can also obscure the famous views to the Old Town and Castle. There now seem to be growing whispers of a radical change to Edinburgh’s transport system; to shift buses off Princes Street.  
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The Council is currently consulting on hugely unpopular proposals for a triangular gyratory system on Picardy Place (2) on the north-east edge of the UNESCO World Heritage site. Officials have recently claimed that one benefit of the scheme is that it would enable buses from the north side of Edinburgh to terminate there and turn around. Passengers for Princes Street and beyond would then be expected to change onto an expanded tram network, so removing hundreds of buses a day from Princes Street. This is not something that should be considered lightly.