Yesterday turned out to be quite a cool day. A week or two ago, Lyn and I were invited to be in a short film which is going to be shown at conferences about disability and technology. It was only a small piece: the only problem was that it was on the other side of town. So at about one yesterday, off we went: it’s easy to forget just how big London is, and hard to get one’s head around. We spent well over three hours getting to the place in Acton town, by which time we were both fairly cranky.

In the end, though, it turned out ok: Lyn and I did what they asked us to – I’ll post a link to the finished film when I get it – and the producers very kindly paid for a taxi home. The three hours on public transport I think we had all been dreading turned into a nice, comfortable one hour taxi ride. It kind of made me reflect, though: there must be an easier way for two cripples to get around town. I thought back to our trip to Australia, and it occurred to me that what we really need is a helicopter. One of those babies certainly would speed up getting across London: I worked out that we could have gone from Charlton to Acton within twenty minutes. It certainly makes sense when you factor in the trouble we have getting on and off busses and in and out of tube stations, not to mention the delays we crips sometimes cause. Mind you, I rather doubt Lyn and I could afford one on the mobility component of our DDA.

Joking aside, while it is true that public transport in London for disabled people has come on a lot recently, there is still vast room for improvement. Yesterday, for instance, an out of order lift added about half an hour to our journey on the tube, and it was a good thing it was in my manual chair as about half the stations marked as accessible are not. Getting around London is not as easy as it could or should be, and there is still a long way to go, especially when you have, er, a long way to go.

The question for Boris, then, is which is cheaper: giving everybody with a mobility disability a helicopter, or making the entire London rail network completely accessible.