Making Rail Accessible

The Project
In December 2005, the Association of Community Rail Partnerships was commissioned by what was then the Rail Passengers Committee (and is now Passenger Focus) to carry out a pilot project ‘Making rail travel accessible for all’.

This would test out new approaches towards tackling social exclusion and transport, through providing tailored travel advice.

The project was based in Slaithwaite, near Huddersfield in West Yorkshire – a mixed small community with a rural and industrial history and pockets of severe social disadvantage – and a railway station.

During winter and spring 2006, time was spent working with over a dozen local organisations to identify potential interviewees who would be representative of one or more of the following groups: elderly people, school leavers, low-income households, lone parents and households without access to a car.

One-to-one interviews were then carried out with individuals who agreed to be interviewed and these sought to establish why, where and how people traveled and where they wished to travel to. Interviews were questionnaire-based, but ranged widely in their coverage and were carried out in a relaxed, chatty way – often over a cup of tea. The interviewer took with her a travel pack providing a range of information on local travel possibilities, including simplified local train timetables and a ‘days out’ leaflet all prepared by the Project. These were discussed with the interviewee and then left with them, hopefully for further use. Follow-up interviews were carried out by phone in April.

As a direct result of these interviews, a trip to Leeds was organised by the interviewer/project worker for three of the families who had been interviewed and their friends, to help them feel more confident about traveling by train, and finding their way around a big station such as Leeds
.

The travel group were accompanied by a film unit from BBC Look North

Observations
Identifying and recruiting potential interviewees for the project was very time consuming, but resulted in 22 individuals who were representative of the required groups, being willing to be interviewed.

Interviewing people on a one-to-one basis and talking them through the questionnaire was also time consuming, but established a good rapport and resulted in high quality information.

Most of the Slaithwaite residents surveyed do already use the train to go to Huddersfield, which shows a success for local rail. Awareness of the local train service across the community as a whole has increased considerably in the last few years and this is reflected in a general increase in passenger numbers.Most of the interviewees don’t seem to travel much beyond Huddersfield.

Most know little about the different types of ticket available eg Metro Day Rovers.
Many people have poor knowledge of local geography and don’t know much about cheap trips to parks, museums and other places of interest.

Many people interviewed were unaware of some of the basic ‘A to Z’ facts of traveling by train, eg the existence of return tickets, different timetables and routes.
The trip to Leeds organised by the project worker for a number of families interviewed helped give them confidence to use the train for longer journeys, to change trains and to find their way around a large station.

All sorts of people contacted by the project really appreciate the simplified timetable info – sheets, cards etc. Many find standard timetables difficult to interpret.

Recommendations
1. Action is required in several areas to help move people out of their ‘travel
comfort zone’. Initiatives could include:

2. Children and young people need to be targeted as key users, currently and in the future.

This requires:

3. The transport industry and PTEs need to put more resources into information aimed at ‘entry level’ users. This could include specialist staff attached to travel centres with skills to work with communities.

4. Specialist support should be provided in local villages/communities, either through ‘village travel centres’ or as part of other community facilities, e.g. community centres, advice centres etc.

5. People working in communities need travel-awareness training so they can assist people and groups they are working with on transport issues or direct them to a suitable resource which can assist.

The full report is available here in pdf format.