A recce at the station

I had a meeting with K. this morning to follow up on the possibility of organising a short film about the access problems at Stroud station. It has been a concern of mine for more than ten years since I became a town councillor. Not there is at last an active and effective 'Station Partnership' and one of its key objectives is to make it easier for people with mobility difficulties to get from one side of the station to the other.

The station was originally designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in thew 1840s and it is rightly regarded as a classic. design of its type. A stylish iron and wood footbridge was created which like the station is a listed structure. However no improvements to it have been made other than coats of paint, now peeling away, a garish handrail and signs warning you to take care.

Everyone agrees that the ideal improvement to the station would be an additional ramped footbridge allowing pedestrians, wheelchairs, pushchairs, cycles and anyone wanting to walking up a ramp rather than climbing steep stairs. Second best would be the more feasible option, because it would be much cheaper, of adding an outside lift to the existing footbridge.

I went to a meeting at Network Rail's offices in Swindon, with two colleagues working on the creation of our town centre Neighbourhood Plan, and got an idea then of how difficult it might be to get our improvements organised or fundeed.  But in the meantime our local station partnership are beginning to make progress. However we still need to show the problems that still exist.

So today K. and I went to check at the station on the information being provided to passengers about how to cross the tracks to the other platform or to get into the town centre. This poster is all the help you will get. If you are a passenger arriving by train you will look high and low on the platform to see this, because it is carefully sited outside the station and only visible from the car park. If you arrive after 6pm there will be no staff able to assist you until 8am the next day.

On the other side of the station the same poster is also sited outside the station in the car park at the farthest point from the two entrances to the station. You might just be able to see that it has a diagrammatic map which attempts to show the path/s you must take to get to the other side if you cannot climb the stairs. I would say that it is a distance of at least two hundred yards, involving walking along footpaths on four different roads, some of which have no drop kerb access for wheelchairs. You have to cross the traffic on at least three of the roads. There is no further help, only a general freephone number for the Railway Company, GWR, by the way.

It was hard to read this poster today, as you might notice that it was misted up behind the plastic screen. If you could read it you would see their helpful advice that 'We advise you to allow plenty of time to make your way around'. If the train comes before you have made it, that is just bad luck. You should have done a recce like me.