Accessing Transport: Trials and Tribulations

Originally Published in the Disability Busters Newsletter 2024

Roughly 17% of people with disabilities in Victoria are unable to catch public transport (I tried to find the statistics from my home state in South Australia but ran out of luck).

I’ve only started catching Ubers and Taxis on my own in the last couple of years because I was concerned about going out on my own to new places, particularly at night, as someone who is legally blind.

Catching buses has always been a lucky dip for me. Some drivers obey the rules and pull into the bus stop when they see me (rather than waiting for me to hail them), lowering the bus so I can step on with ease, and letting me know when we approach my stop so that I don’t have to press the buzzer and hope I see where to get off.

The trams in South Australia talk, and I once caught a talking bus. I excitedly messaged my big brother, knowing that I could ride the bus and not have to worry about the driver missing my stop.

In The Glove Box podcast episode Taxis, Ubers and the Regional Experience, we hear, "It’s not uncommon for passengers in wheelchairs in regional areas to wait hours for a taxi”.

I grew up in the Adelaide Hills, and although I occasionally saw taxis, I never caught one for two reasons: safety and cost. Instead, I used buses but that was really limited to one route.

Deb Haygarth, who works for Women with Disabilities Victoria in Geelong, says, “Not everyone can use buses, so taxis are the way to go”.

Now that I live in the inner suburbs and occasionally like to go out with friends at night, buses no longer work as my primary means of transport, so, just like for Deb, taxis have become really important.

Unfortunately, as Deb notes, “Sometimes accessible taxis don’t turn up”.

Last New Years Eve I decided to go out with a friend to the city and my family were concerned I wouldn’t be able to order a taxi.

Ironically, I’ve had more trouble with Ubers in this area than with taxis, which have generally been pretty reliable.

Michelle notes, “You can’t catch a taxi after midnight because I’m sure they don’t think we go out after midnight”.

I’ve never booked a taxi ahead of time but when I’ve tried to book an Uber Assist late at night I’ve been met with this same experience: they’re unavailable.

So I’ve had to order a taxi, and hope it doesn’t take ages to arrive.

But this isn’t about attention-seeking or complaining. As Deb says, “We don’t want pity; we want reasonable transport that’s going to turn up.”

Just like everyone else, “We want to be able to go out and come home late”, and if you think about it that doesn’t just benefit us, it benefits everyone because it means we’re providing people with business.

So why is it that often getting the business of people with disabilities isn’t prioritised in mainstream areas?

As Michelle says, “If we took transport away for people for a day, you’d be on the news”.

We should be able to go out and have fun, do the things that make us happy and if we are able to do so, independently.

It shouldn’t be up to us to try to organise a support worker where we may not need one and we shouldn’t have to take the risk of our transport being unreliable.

Michelle has been in situations where she has “been invited out, and I’ve been told there are no cabs, so I’ve had to cancel on my friends.”

It's not a nice feeling just like anyone who has to cancel on their friends.

You feel like you’ve let them down, and you blame yourself because you think that if you didn’t have a disability, it wouldn’t be that hard to organise transport.

Even if you find a system that works, it’s often expensive and sporadic.

Now, of course, people without disabilities also have horror stories of taxis and public transport. But for people with disabilities, there’s that added layer, and again, like so many of the things I’ve written about so far, it comes down to access.