Greater Anglia supports accessibility campaign

Greater Anglia is supporting a new campaign aimed at helping people with disabilities travel on trains more easily.

The Department for Transport has launched ‘It’s everyone’s journey’ – an advertising campaign to highlight how everyone can play a part in making public transport inclusive.

At present too many disabled people say that they don’t feel confident using public transport and 1 in 4 say that negative attitudes from other passengers prevent them from travelling.¹

The Department for Transport’s new campaign aims to show other passengers the impact their unconscious behaviour can have on disabled passengers and encourages them to make small changes to their habits when travelling, such as:

• Be prepared to give up a priority seat

• Be prepared to help each other

• Be patient with each other

• Don’t charge through busy platforms

• Respect all accessible toilet users

Rebecca Richardson, Greater Anglia’s Accessibilty Manager, said, “Public transport is at the heart of how we all live our lives, helping us get to work, school or college, healthcare appointments and social events.

“At Greater Anglia we want public transport to be truly inclusive and disabled people to be able to travel as confidently as other passengers.

“We’re working hard to ensure that everyone can have an enjoyable journey with us.

“This campaign also reminds us all of the need to be compassionate and courteous and we are very happy to support it.”

Greater Anglia is working to make its trains and stations more accessible, with its fleet of new trains more accessible by design with level boarding, large wheelchair spaces and accessible toilets on every train, the introduction of virtual online station tours to help with journey planning and confidence, Accessibility & Inclusion training for staff, and upgrades to improve access at stations and car parks across the network.

More information about the campaign can be found at gov.uk/everyonesjourney #ItsEveryonesJourney

¹ Independent. Confident. Connected., SCOPE, 2018

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