David Gillon

Seeing as my LNER account was giving shenanigans and the last time I used it the tickets by post didn't actually arrive, I decided to pop down to the local station (Southeastern, not LNER, but everyone covers travel on everyone else) and buy my train tickets the old-fashioned way.

So I roll up to the ticket desk and tell the guy I need to go from X to Y on the Zth and back a few days later, "And obviously I'll need the wheelchair space for that."

He pokes at his machine for several minutes and announces a price.

Me: "That's fine for the outbound, but I checked before I came out and the return leg should be £10 less".

Him: Grumble, poke. "Okay, yes, there's two options and one of them is cheaper." (So why didn't you/your system find them?)

So I swipe my card and he prints out the tickets.

And only then does he tell me: "I can't book the wheelchair space from my system, you need to ring our passenger assistance people, you'll know their number".

For godssakes, this is a major commuter station, the teeny little (Northern) station at my mother's can book the assistance, the wheelchair space and print me out a summary of everything, there's no excuse for Southeastern not having the same capabilities in place.       

I'm all in favour of keeping ticket offices*, the idea of everyone booking online ignores the digital divide, but some stations are far better than others at handling assistance requests and there really is no excuse.

I didn't ring Southeastern's passenger assistance, because no, I don't know their number, I do however know LNER's who sorted it straight out.

* There's currently a train operating company** campaign to do away with all of them, and it's absolutely blatantly obvious that it will then be followed by making more stations completely unmanned. 

** Clearly orchestrated by the government, who've already been told this will breach the Equality Act by their own access body.

... on (disabled) Passenger Assistance on the railways.

It keeps demanding to know if I had passenger assistance to get to "the wheelchair area". I have no idea what "the wheelchair area" is, I'd assume they meant the wheelchair space aboard train, but context seems to suggest it's something that comes before boarding. Someone suggested it might be the sort of wheelie cattle pen the less clued in airports use, but I can think of precisely one UK station which has one (Euston I think, or maybe Liverpool St?).

And why are they demanding to know how my booking worked at Chatham when Chatham is a turn-up and go station and would handle me even if the booking didn't work, to the point of not being able to tell if the booking worked or not.

And in any case I always turn up an hour early at Chatham, so I never use my booking.

Which made me realise that I turn up an hour early because LNER's online booking system, the one I use to book both my ticket and my passenger assistance on the same form, inevitably books me on a train getting into St Pancras at 12:06, or later, to catch a train leaving London KX at 12:30, and that gives me 24 minutes, or less to:

Wait for the ramp to turn up, get off the train and off the platform, c150m, through the ticket check and down the lift: 5 minutes, minimum, 12:11

Cross to Kings Cross and get to Passenger Assistance Desk: 180m, busy multi-lane road with traffic light controlled crossing, 5 minutes minimum, 12:16

Book in with KX Passenger Assistance 20 minutes before departure (ie 12:10):  Um, not happening, but call it 5 minutes because it's also the inevitably busy passenger info desk: 12:21

Wait for assistance guy to turn up: varies from instant if there's one standing there, to ten minutes, call it 5 minutes on average: 12:26

Get to train: slightly dependent on which platform, but call it 350-400m (far end of a nine-carriage train), and 5 minutes: 12:31

Deploy onboard ramp, undoing three separate locks, get me aboard, check wheelchair space is free, evict anyone sitting in it or using it for their luggage, make sure I'm okay, put ramp back and relock all three locks: 5 minutes, minimum, 12:36

Which is a bit unfortunate when they closed and locked the doors at 12:28.

Some Passenger Assistance problems start with "Computer says ..."

Obviously the booking form is treating everyone as an ambulant passenger and there would be time for most people to make it, though with very little leeway. But that same form also includes my request for passenger assistance. You don't even need to parse the contents, there's no way even a world class sprinter is getting from a 12:06 arrival at St Pancras over to the passenger assistance desk at KX by their 12:10 check-in deadline*. If there's a passenger assistance request, that train combination is not viable.

* They don't enforce the deadline, Darlington regularly handle me with 8 minutes between trains, probably 5 by the time I've gotten to the assistance desk if they aren't waiting for me off the incoming train, but it's a useful marker of how long _they_ think is necessary.

* That was the occasion when the receptionist took one look at my handwriting and decided to fill in the form for me.