How The Independent sparked genuine cross-party work to help disabled people on public transport

For a moment it felt like one of the vivid hallucinations I experienced while pumped full of morphine in the immediate aftermath of my accident

‘Our city’s network is simply not accessible enough for Londoners who have disabilities,’ said Andrew Boff (Getty)

Since I returned to work after getting run over by a cement truck, The Independent has afforded me the opportunity to chronicle my own and others’ unpleasant experiences on public transport as mobility impaired people. MIPs in London Underground-speak.

There has been a lot to write about: a gruesome series of columns involving embarrassment, humiliation, sometimes even pain.

After more than eight years of penning them, I have at times felt close to despair. My pieces have often created a bit of a stir on Twitter. They’ve been picked up by disabled people’s organisations and disability charities. Sometimes the stories of people that I’ve written about have generated some interest at other media outlets. The BBC has shown it is particularly capable of moving when stories involve celebrities or paralympians.

But what then? It has often felt to me as if people tut, shake their heads, and then move on to the piece about that latest scandal on Love Island. This gives a pass to those who could change the situation for the better.

Until now.

The most recent unpleasant experience on my own sadly lengthening list occurred on the London Underground, where I was repeatedly referred to as an “MIP” in a way that made me feel like an alien, and branded as the cause of a delay to a train over the tannoy because, the driver explained, of the need to provide me with assistance. Assistance I’d specifically said I didn’t want or need.

I wrote about it last month. The way I had to stare at the floor in embarrassment while a carriage full of people gawked at me (at least that’s how it felt) is still fresh in my mind.

To my surprise, however, this piece didn’t get superseded by Love Island. Instead, it prompted an email, from Andrew Boff, a Conservative member of the Greater London Assembly.

This wasn’t necessarily whom I might have expected to turn up with a hammer and an offer to help widen the hole in the wall I’ve been banging my head against, given the trenchant views I’ve had cause to express about his party and its disability policy.

However, when I explained what had happened to me, and some of the other experiences I’d had trying to get around the capital, Boff seemed genuinely troubled. Better still, he promised to take action, on a bipartisan basis if possible.

The result was the following motion: “This Assembly urges the mayor to ensure TfL staff are trained to assist passengers with disabilities by: respecting the passenger’s wishes as to the level of help they require, not drawing unnecessary public attention to the passenger and by providing reasonable assistance to passengers to enable them to travel in the way that they choose.”

It was co-signed by Labour’s deputy mayor Joanne McCartney.

Cross-party action in the name of a progressive cause. For a moment it almost felt like I was in one of the vivid hallucinations I experienced while pumped full of morphine in the immediate aftermath of the smash.

Discussing the motion, McCartney made the point that many members of TFL staff are exemplars of good practice. That is indeed true. But, as she also said, it is important that they listen and act upon what is said. Which is exactly what didn’t happen with me.

Boff said this: “Our city’s network is simply not accessible enough for Londoners who have disabilities. It shouldn’t be an effort to get from your front door to your place of work.”

No it should not. No, no and thrice no. Public transport, he opined, should be boring.

Yes, yes, and thrice yes. Experiences like mine shouldn’t have to be featured in the pages of The Independent. I shouldn’t have to write about them. I want to be devoting my headbanging energies to Brexit and what a godawful idea it is, to education, the health service, business, the economy, anything really.

I haven’t felt able to venture on to the underground on my own since that last fascinating incident.

Will the motion help change that? If the mayor acts upon it, if Transport for London takes note, it could. There’s a shaft of light coming through that crack in the wall.

I will be meeting with Nick Dent from London Underground later this month in the hopes of opening it a little wider.

In the meantime, there is a message here for campaigners: don’t give in to despair as I almost did. Keep banging away, even it it gives you a migraine.