Emily Howlett: Why I (still) hate travelling by train (BSL)

Last week I must have been feeling adventurous; I embarked on a train journey which was NOT direct. Not only that, it had TWO changes. Adventurous, bordering on impossible, am I right?!

Well, no. I imagine such travel is a fairly normal, regular occurrence for a lot of people. A train journey with changes? That’s no problem. In fact, it’s an opportunity to get some air, maybe a slightly better class of cappuccino than is available onboard, possibly a slightly better class of toilet than is available on board…

For me, it’s an opportunity to scuttle around a train station that’s too far away to easily get home from, feeling my heart rate rise with every passing minute and any possible benefits of my cochlear implant feeling increasingly irrelevant.

I *hate* travelling by train with a change along the route simply because, despite it being 2023 and not 1903, there still seems to be zero consideration of deaf or hard of hearing passengers who can’t simply listen to announcements. (Although I’ve been told on more than one occasion that the hearing people don’t necessarily have it any easier; apparently the tannoy systems in many stations are also still stuck in 1903 and anything that comes out of them sounds like it’s actually coming from over 100 years ago.)

Deaf people all know the situation; the train you’re expecting just doesn’t arrive to the platform where you’re diligently standing, waiting. If you’re lucky, there may be someone around to ask (although with all the cuts and other dehumanising nonsense of a railway that isn’t nationalised, the real, live people are becoming even more rare than shiny, legendary Pokémon), and if you’re VERY lucky, they’ll tell you that your train is now going to be at the next platform along.

If, like me, the universe just doesn’t smile on you, there won’t be a person, and if you do manage to work out where the train is going to arrive (through your phone apps, or telepathy, or galloping back to the main concourse – all of which I’ve tried at various times) it will be the opposite end of the building and leaving in ten seconds.

I won’t get started on the issues that arise actually onboard the damn trains, because this is very much a station-based rant… But there’s plenty to be said one day (and has been said, many days, by many of us) about inaccessible loudspeaker announcements about changes of stop, emergency evacuations or, as I discovered once in Crewe, the fact only the front half of the train will be continuing the journey. (This explains, in part, my ongoing hatred of Crewe, despite never having set foot there apart from inside the train station.)

Now, this isn’t a new rant, by any means. I’ve been travelling to London and Manchester, Cardiff and Leeds, Edinburgh and Newcastle for work and auditions since I was 18. That wasn’t *quite* back in 1903, but it’s been a pretty long time. And this issue has been consistent for all of it.

I thought the dawn of phone apps and data roaming, and on demand information about anything, at any time, would bring about a real improvement in the accessibility of travel in general, and rail travel specifically. In fact, it feels like all it’s done is dangle a carrot in front of my little donkey face, and then snatch it away again.

Yes, I’ve got the apps with live arrival information – but they don’t always get updated. Yes, I’ve got the route planner – but it doesn’t help if the routes on it aren’t happening in real life. Yes, I can go and ask a person and hope I understand them (because chance of them having any BSL skills are only slightly lower than them existing in the first place) – but that situation isn’t going to help my heart rate one bit. 

Maybe there’s some things out there that I don’t know about, or I’m using the wrong apps. But it still feels, as usual, like the onus is on me, the customer of the railway service, to make sure I find out the information in my own way.

Anyone who can hear doesn’t have to put any extra effort in to their travel; they are catered for by the tannoy announcements. I guess, if that didn’t happen, it would be a (rubbish) form of equality, because at least we’d all be in the same boat, jabbing at our phones and dashing around looking for an assistant. But it isn’t that I want *less* for everyone else, I just want the same for me. Is that so selfish?

I want to be able to sit like a hearing person and enjoy my slightly better-quality cappuccino, and read a bit of a terrible cheap magazine, without panicking the whole time that there’s disembodied voices telling everyone else the changes that I, actually, need to know. I don’t want to be glued to my phone, constantly refreshing the screen in case there’s new information.

I don’t like technology. I resent having to use it just to function as a traveller, and I REALLY resent having to do so when it doesn’t even work. It might seem outdated, but just having actual screens on each platform, that are updated at the same time an announcement is made, can’t be that difficult? Can it?

I don’t need it to have artsy fonts or graphics; I’m only asking for words and maybe a number or two, so I don’t end up stuck in Crewe for four hours with only a powdery chai latte because they ran out of coffee. Nobody deserves that, even me. 

Sorry, Crewe. It’s not your fault; it’s the people who run you. And I suppose you did give me a Pikachu in a funky hat…