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The Brisbane Metro has many things: a whimsical theme tune. A hefty price tag. A cooler cousin. What it does not have, I’ve personally discovered, is a reliably pleasant, accessible experience. In my younger and more innocent days upon the first rollout of the Metro last year, when I (an ambulatory wheelchair user) still had the first-year spark in my eyes, I had received the mistaken impression that the Metro would be what we call an ‘accessibility win.’ There were three wheelchair spaces, one more than your average bus, and an automatic ramp which extended at the push of a button, saving me from certain pesky bus-drivers (apparently not having received adequate accessibility training) who are convinced the tiny wheels of my electric wheelchair can make the jump up a few inches onto the bus all by themselves. (This is not an exaggeration. I once had a bold driver look me dead in the eyes and say, “you don’t need a ramp.”) What I did not foresee were the Problems.
Allow me to run through the experience of using the Metro in an electric wheelchair. First, you wait for the crowd of people around the sole door you can enter to clear. You press the ramp button, and the doors immediately close, striking cold fear into your heart. Fortunately, a loud digital voice will soon chime in with the calming phrase: “Wheelchair ramp requested. Doors will remain closed until ramp has been extended. Wheelchair ramp extending.” Your relief will quickly turn to embarrassment as the voice loudly repeats itself and your fellow patrons watch you from inside the bus, checking their phones to see if this delay will make them late. Finally, the famed ramp extends, and you prepare to ascend it.
Here, however, another issue presents itself. Like any other bus (ha ha) the Metro’s floor level is significantly higher than the platform, making it difficult to get up the ramp without falling over backwards (especially with a backpack weighing you down). The solution to this is to ‘deflate’ the bus so that it temporarily sits lower, a mechanism which I do not understand but greatly appreciate. You would think that with all its high-tech equipment and expert design, the metro would automatically do this process upon the request of the otherwise automatic ramp. This is not the case. The functioning of this feature on the Metro is a mystery to me, but I get the impression that it is done manually. This presents a problem. The driver, thinking all is well in the automated-ramp world, may forget to perform this essential step, leaving the brave wheelchair user facing an incline which is the paralympic equivalent of Mount Everest. And with the driver locked away in their separate compartment, there’s no way to let them know of your trouble. So you lean forward, zoom up, and grab a handrail to stop yourself falling over backwards, breaking your neck, and needing a second wheelchair. The very first time I rode the Metro I faced this struggled, grabbed wildly at the railings as I felt my front wheels leave the ground (BAD), and once safely inside the vehicle turned around to see a news crew filming metres behind me. The entire entry experience leaves one feeling flustered and embarrassed.
While you’re inside the futuristic chambers of the Metro, you can take the opportunity to observe the accessibility features for other members of the community. Deaf passengers are served by the train-style announcement display, and the socially anxious and autistic are aided by the detailed stop display, which informs passengers of destinations, time until arrival, and even key sights to see at each stop. The extra wheelchair/walker/pram spaces are a blessing, and the seats fold up impressively smoothly. Blind and visually impaired patrons are catered for by announcements of each stop and the aforementioned ramp announcement extravaganza, but looking to the communication panel beside your wheelchair you may see that the tactile letters on some displays are already falling off. You will also see a large and obtrusive camera aimed directly in your face, presumably so the driver can see who they’re talking to should you press the assistance button, but which makes the whole trip feel like an extended scene from 1984.
But now the fun is over, as you are approaching your stop. With sorrow in your heart, you press the ramp request button, which seems to take joy in once more shouting its extended refrain. Your fellow passengers crowd confusedly around the door, pressing the button to try and force it open. Finally, the ramp emerges and everyone rushes out on their way, with you trailing behind. But here’s the kicker; sometimes the ramp doesn’t extend.
So here we come to the most egregious part of all. Sometimes, the ramp does not extend. And I don’t just mean “the ramp isn’t working today,” I mean that sometimes the ramp will function perfectly well letting you on, luring you in, but after a five minute journey it will decide to take some self-care time and not let you back off again. This has happened to me one whole time and I’ll tell you what, that was enough. My visual investigations reveal that there appears to be a spare manual ramp in the driver’s cabin, but the training for this eventuality is clearly inadequate, as on this occasion my driver emerged from their cocooned cabin and told me to “go on the back wheels” to get off.
An astute suggestion were I in a manual wheelchair, where wheelies are an everyday occurrence, but my electric chair has small wheels that can barely handle a two centimetre drop; flying free over the gap between metro and platform simply cannot happen. It was only the fact that I could get out and push my own wheelchair that allowed me to get off at all, and I cannot emphasise how unacceptable this is. People who rely on electric wheelchairs and cannot just ‘get up and push’ have a right to live independently and take supposedly ‘accessible’ transportation without occasionally needing a team of emergency assistants to conjure up a quick fix. Issues with the ramp should be planned for and a spare manual ramp should be ready for use, full stop. Ten minutes later, when I finally escaped, I was left harried, embarrassed, and late for class.
I know I’m far from the first person to have issues with the Metro, or TransLink, or the world. All of the things I complained about in my original copy of this article from April seem to have somehow gotten worse. Indeed, at this point the questionable accessibility of the Metro is arguably the least of my issues. But, truly, there’s reason to complain, because these things can be fixed. It is perfectly within reason to ask those who run our future-thinking, Olympic-hosting city to seriously consider their disabled constituents in all decisions, not just as afterthoughts whose comfort is forgotten so long as minimum accessibility requirements are fulfilled. Wide-reaching and empathetic approaches to accessibility should be the pride of any society that truly cares about its citizens, and any person who cares about their fellows.
Written by Moran
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