Journalist Attacks Chiltern For Providing *Too Many* Disabled parking spaces

[route:oxford]

Former East Lothian Courier, Edinburgh Evening News, Daily Record, Sunday Mirror, Evening Standard, The Sunday Times & Daily Mail journalist Isabel Oakeshott has attacked Chiltern for providing too many disabled spaces describing them as "a triumph of political correctness over common sense"

Utterly nasty piece of work. There must be about 800 "standard" spaces, so it's hardly an outrageous ratio.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-43128494

A tweet by journalist Isabel Oakeshott taking aim at the number of disabled parking spaces at a train station has sparked anger on social media.

She posted the picture of empty blue badge bays at Oxford Parkway along with the message "a triumph of political correctness over common sense".

Brian O'Callaghan said "That is, Oxford Parkway, a vast car park. How many non-designated spaces were also vacant?"

Another user, Tristan, tweeted "there are around 700-800 non disabled spaces there and 40 disabled. Don't see what the problem is."

 

[Domh245]

I'm guessing that the number of disabled spaces is the result of some sort of legal ratio that is required, and so the only reason that there are as many spaces as there are is because there are also loads of conventional spaces?

 

[Michael.Y]

Odious tart who thinks a posh accent and shiny cheekbones equals substance. Middle name Euphemia.

 

[Mag_seven]

Daily Mail journalist

Nuff said.

 

[Strathclyder]

She previously worked at the Daily Mail. That's all that needs said, really.

 

[swt_passenger]

Gone about asking the question completely the wrong way, but unless the requirements have changed recently the ratio of blue badge to normal spaces seems over 10%, which isn’t typical at all.

 

[DanTrain]

As much as I completely disagree with the intended meaning in this article, I do find some truth in over provision of disabled spaces in some circumstances. At my local station, the car park is always packed in the week (and often at the weekend too), with cars parked on surrounding roads too, which is potentially dangerous. However, there are I think 7 disabled bays, of which only 3 or 4 are normally used. Whilst disabled people should always be able to park close to the station in large bays, this is far from a perfect solution.

In some places, prebooking a space might work, with others allowed to use it if it's not needed, although that wouldn't work on stations with high numbers of passengers buying a ticket as they arrive.

I'm by no means condoning the position in this article, but I just feel the current solution of a mandated percentage of bays isn't necessarily a brilliant solution. It may, however, be the best one we have (until self-driving cars, anyway!)

 

[Kettledrum]

I can think of a number of council run car parks where the provision of disabled car parking spaces is excessive, with row after row of spaces that are always empty - and all the other spaces in the car park regularly being completely full. This is really frustrating. However, in my experience commercial companies and train companies normally get a more sensible balance that reflects demand.

 

[Llanigraham]

In some places, prebooking a space might work, with others allowed to use it if it's not needed, although that wouldn't work on stations with high numbers of passengers buying a ticket as they arrive.

Fine.
I want to book a disable space starting at 1100 until 1500, due to say a hospital appointment.
How are you going to "let" that space for the rest of the time?
How are you going to ensure that someone who perhaps did book it untill 1100 actually removes their car at that time?
Who pays for the booking system?
Who Polices the system?

 

[The Ham]

There are rules about the percentage of disabled spaces and these vary depending on the usage associated with the car park.

Often is about 6-10%, which is broadly in line with the numbers of people in the general population who would be in need of them.

The problem with a lot of council car parks is that due to blue badge holders being able to park on yellow lines the level of need within car parks is lower than it should be if everything else was equal.

Conversely there's the fact (which is probably a chicken/egg thing) that there'll be some people who will park in disabled spaces when they're not entitled to do so.

As a TOC I would suggest that it's better to over supply the number of disabled spaces and then change them to standard spaces once the car park is established and there's an understanding of likely demand.

I would, however, question when the photo was taken. As my experience is that during the morning rush hour the number of disabled people on trains is lower than at other times (due to overcrowding, that due to motobility schemes travel by car can be supported and there's a reasonable number of blue badge holders that are retired and so if they are going to travel by train will often wait for off peak tickets to become available before traveling) as such is the photo was taken at 08:30 you'd probably get a different photo than if it were taken at 12:00.

 

[jopsuk]

via Journalist Dawn Foster, one in twenty people in the UK have a Blue Badge and they're more likely than other people to drive when going to railway stations. The photo was misleadingly framed to make it look bad; there are 41 disabled spaces out of 815, so there are in fact 5% which is about right (and may even be a minimum standard?)

 

[PeterC]

It is fairly overcast in the photo but there seems to be one visible shadow indicating that the sun is roughly in the south west so, assuming that the photo is recent, probably mid morning. We don't know what day of the week it was taken on though.

I would imagine that she went to do a shock horror about the Travellers camping on the car park only to find that they had moved on so had to find a different "story".

 

[Tio Terry]

DfT
Design Standards for Accessible Railway Stations
See section C2, quotes BS8300 as the national standard that determines the number of PRM parking spaces.

 

[AM9]

Odious tart who thinks a posh accent and shiny cheekbones equals substance. Middle name Euphemia.

So she is a euphemism for something ...

 

[Bletchleyite]

In essence the situation that is required is that if a disabled driver drives up there is always[1] one space available for them but none spare above that (on a wider level this is the optimal state for any car park generally, not just disabled spaces). This is quite hard to achieve so what you have to do is overprovide a bit. This is normally done via a standard formula, but does result in things like high provision of disabled spaces in places where disabled people tend to have low demand - things like climbing walls.

Another option would be that a disabled driver was entitled to compensation of say £500 paid by the car park operator if they drove up to a car park and there were no spaces available. But that is obviously quite difficult - what, say, if there was an organised away day of disabled car users who found it a convenient way to get themselves £500? And how do you enforce it?

So the present situation is probably the most sensible.

[1] An able bodied driver can park elsewhere and walk much more readily. So "there should always be a space available" is a much more reasonable requirement than for an able bodied driver.

 

[Hartington]

At Castle Cary the car park capacity is about 70. Nominally there are 2 disabled and 2 20 minute spaces in a block. I say "nominally" because there are currently temporary toilets plonked on the 2 20 minute and one of the disabled bays. It's been that way for at least 6 months and I see little sign of that changing in the near future.

QUESTION. In the event that disabled bays become unusable after what period of time does alternative provision HAVE to be made or can it be allowed ad-infinitum if the blockage is temporary?

 

[Gareth Marston]

I wonder what she'd make of the ASDA Superstore @ Dowlais Top - that has to have the worlds most Disabled parking spaces.

 

[AM9]

I wonder what she'd make of the ASDA Superstore @ Dowlais Top - that has to have the worlds most Disabled parking spaces.

By my estimation, it looks like the car park there has 546 spaces of which 36 are reserved for blue badge drivers. I make that just 6.6% provision. So no problem for normal drivers.
Indeed, there may be a case for more places there for PRM's vehicles.

 

[pdeaves]

I wonder what she'd make of the ASDA Superstore @ Dowlais Top - that has to have the worlds most Disabled parking spaces.

Too far from London. Doesn't matter.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

[1] An able bodied driver can park elsewhere and walk much more readily. So "there should always be a space available" is a much more reasonable requirement than for an able bodied driver.

Yep, I'd agree with that. And to add to that, there's also a statistical argument for over-providing disabled spaces:

For the sake of argument, let's assume the figure someone quoted of about 5% of drivers being blue badge holders is correct. That implies that, if on average there are say 100 cars in the car park at the busiest time of day, then on average 5 of those would require disabled spaces. But that's only the average: Inevitably, the actual number of cars will fluctuate from day to day - and the smaller the average, the more significant those fluctuations will be: If on average there are 5 disabled cars parked, then you will probably quite often have days when there are twice as many (10). On the other hand, on an average of 95 non-disabled cars, random fluctuations will almost never cause twice as many cars to turn up - simply because the bigger number of cars smooths out the fluctuations. That means that if you want to be reasonably sure of providing enough spaces to cope with day-to-day fluctuations, you need to provide more than 5% of disabled spaces.

In mathematical terms I believe you'd be looking at a Poisson distribution for which standard deviation = square root (mean). I think with my above example, if you expected an average of 100 cars to be parked at the busiest time of day, with 5% blue badge holders, and you wanted to be able to cope with, say, 3 standard deviations of randomness in the demand, you'd need to provide 5 + 3 * sqrt (5) = 12 disabled spaces and 95 + 3 * sqrt (95) = 130 non-disabled spaces. So the actual proportion of disabled spaces would be 12/130 = 9.2%. That number will get closer to 5% for bigger car parks )

 

[gallafent]

I happened to notice (Chiltern Journeycheck) that the car park at Oxford Parkway was full at 1053 this morning. Not great for a “parkway” station, and a surefire way to make anyone thinking of using the train for the first time to be put off in a pretty permanent way. I wonder how many disabled spaces were empty at this point. Surely a dynamic system which, once all enabled spaces are used, allows anyone to use the disabled spaces (starting from those furthest from the station building) would be sensible.

 

[Taunton]

For those who say the photograph is unrepresentative, when Google Earth flew over to photograph it they seem to have found the same situation

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.8040263,-1.2746,121m/data=!3m1!1e3

Land purchase and construction costs for car parks vary, but about £7,000 per space is a common benchmark. +50% for disabled spaces which have buffers on each side.

 

[Revilo]

I have to say I agree with Isobel Okeshott on this one.

Fine to over-provide disabled spaces initially, to test demand, but if after careful assessment they're not being used then why not convert then to spaces for everyone to use (who include those who might not be officially disabled but who are elderly or can't walk far etc). What's the benefit of leaving spaces empty, other than virtue-signalling?

Parking standards are usually based on the Council's planning policy, but with a degree of latitude.

 

[Bevan Price]

There are rules about the percentage of disabled spaces and these vary depending on the usage associated with the car park.

Often is about 6-10%, which is broadly in line with the numbers of people in the general population who would be in need of them.

The problem with a lot of council car parks is that due to blue badge holders being able to park on yellow lines the level of need within car parks is lower than it should be if everything else was equal.

.

And unfortunately, there are some who abuse the right to park on yellow lines by parking in the most stupid locations - e.g. at road junctions, making it difficult or dangerous for other road users.

 

[Llanigraham]

I happened to notice (Chiltern Journeycheck) that the car park at Oxford Parkway was full at 1053 this morning. Not great for a “parkway” station, and a surefire way to make anyone thinking of using the train for the first time to be put off in a pretty permanent way. I wonder how many disabled spaces were empty at this point. Surely a dynamic system which, once all enabled spaces are used, allows anyone to use the disabled spaces (starting from those furthest from the station building) would be sensible.

But what if a disabled driver wants to use a space later in the day?

 

[route:oxford]

I have to say I agree with Isobel Okeshott on this one.

There's always bound to be someone as nasty as she is.

Or maybe just foolish and haven't considered that within a few years this car park will also be serving rail users going to Milton Keynes, and Cambridge?

 

[route:oxford]

I happened to notice (Chiltern Journeycheck) that the car park at Oxford Parkway was full at 1053 this morning. Not great for a “parkway” station, and a surefire way to make anyone thinking of using the train for the first time to be put off in a pretty permanent way. I wonder how many disabled spaces were empty at this point. Surely a dynamic system which, once all enabled spaces are used, allows anyone to use the disabled spaces (starting from those furthest from the station building) would be sensible.

The city has lost nearly a thousand spaces at the nearby Peartree Park & Ride due to a tribe of nomadic people taking up residence. The local authority can't get the court papers through to evict them until the 2nd of March.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

[1] An able bodied driver can park elsewhere and walk much more readily. So "there should always be a space available" is a much more reasonable requirement than for an able bodied driver.

To be fair, Isabel Oakeshott would indeed usually walk: she lives 500 yards' walk (and a significantly longer drive) from a station with a fast hourly service to Paddington. I live a similar distance from the same station, though on a different street.

Unfortunately, the service from said station has utterly gone to s**t since the New Year thanks to GWR's inability to supply trained drivers for their shiny new IETs, and large numbers of local people are now driving to Parkway instead.

 

[tago]

The service has indeed gone to pot, with large numbers of delays and cancellations.

But people with mobility restrictions already have to drive to Parkway, due to the lengthy ramps with no lift following redoubling at the station in question, and the absence of either regular trains or disabled bays at other nearby stations.

 

[6Gman]

Gone about asking the question completely the wrong way, but unless the requirements have changed recently the ratio of blue badge to normal spaces seems over 10%, which isn’t typical at all.

I believe the ratio in this particular car park is around 1:25 i.e. for every 100 standard spaces there are 4 disabled spaces. Which presumably reflects some sort of national rules/ guidelines.