The Unintended Consequences of Mobility Training

There is no doubt that the thing I hated most about being a partially blind pre-teen was the dreaded 'mobility training'. When I was 11 years old, a well-meaning lady (let's call her 'Doris') started coming to my house once a week in an attempt to teach me how to get around. I loved the idea of Independence and couldn't wait to be allowed to walk home from school alone or go into town on my own, but I hated the reality of the training. It felt so infuriatingly patronising to be taught how to use a bus timetable or read a metro map. When I'd mastered these basics, 'Doris' would devise complicated journeys around the Tyne and Wear public transport network for me to complete whilst she followed at a distance to make sure I didn't come to any harm. I couldn't bear being watched by her and after one particularly nasty 'spying' incident I only reluctantly (and tearfully) agreed to continue with the training because I knew it would lead to my much-craved Independence.

Thirty years later I still feel angry when I think back to those sessions, but I can now also appreciate their consequences. Thanks to 'Doris' I have always been a confident and proficient traveller. I have no qualms whatsoever about undertaking long journeys alone, have travelled solo in the UK, Spain, France and the US and have always felt a thrill of excitement in the bustle of a busy train station. Perhaps this is why I do a job that involves around 15 hours of bus and train journeys each week.

My 'mobility training' certainly taught me how to find my way in both familiar and unfamiliar settings but I wonder now if it had a more profound effect on my approach to travel. I love getting to grips with unfamiliar public transport networks and can be quite geeky about the intricacies of various bus routes. Before undertaking a journey to a new place I can spent hours studying timetables, route maps and plans in an attempt to create a mental map of the journey before me and once I'm on my journey I love the sense of community and belonging that public transport brings. When most of my friends and colleagues would automatically jump into a taxi in an unfamiliar place, I feel a huge buzz when I get where I'm going via complicated combinations of buses, trains and trams. It may take longer, but it is so much more satisfying. Resorting to taxis feels like failure to me. So each time I successfully complete a tricky journey and triumphantly conquer another public transport network I think that just perhaps the 'Doris' sessions were not as bad as I thought at the time. Would I have become such a happy and enthusiastic traveller without her?

In Praise of Public Transport

Waiting for the bus in Nimes, April 2013

Most people assume that not being able to drive is the most negative thing about being registered blind. But I have never seen it that way. At times not being able to hop in the car at will can be mildly inconvenient but this is an occasional annoyance rather than a tragedy.

The same people who feel sorry for me because I will never drive, tend to overlook the main advantage of not driving: public transport. I love public transport. True, it is generally slower than going from A to B by car but once you've accepted that speed is not necessarily as important as Jeremy Clarkson would have us believe, and got used to a little bit of forward planning, public transport is a lot of fun.

This year I managed to convince my (driver) husband to put this theory to the test by travelling round France exclusively on buses, trains (both under and overground) and trams. French public transport is cheap, plentiful and well-organised and we managed to do everything we wanted (including a trip to the remote Pont du Gard) without a car. Public transport is a great way of feeling part of the country you are visiting. Conversations spring up easily with fellow passengers (especially when you have two chatterbox children with you) and it gives much more interesting insights into the minutiae of everyday life than a cocoon-like car. Studying train timetables and eavesdropping are two of my favourite pastimes so I am particularly well-suited to the combination of co-ordination and communality which makes public transport such a pleasure. And listening to people's conversations (especially in France) always makes me feel more at home.

Above the Pont du Gard, April 2013

Recent eco-initiatives have made public transport more popular but it is still vastly underrated. For most people is it is a second-choice or worst-case scenario. But my blindness allows me to experience the fun, adventure and camaraderie of communal travel which car drivers unwittingly miss out on.

To the Buses

It is one of the horrible ironies of modern life that blind and partially blind non-car-drivers can also find it incredibly difficult to use public transport. Surely, the very fact that the blind cannot drive should have meant that public transport was designed especially with us in mind.
Not so.. According to a recent RNIB report, 9 out of 10 partially blind bus uses have trouble hailing buses whilst 8 out of 10 have missed buses as a result of their vision. I use buses almost every day and hate not knowing which bus is coming until it is pretty much already at the stop. I used to use a hand-held monocle to read bus numbers. But this is tricky to juggle with glasses, white cane, umbrella, bag, bus pass etc. So now I use a mixture of techniques.
Where possible I rely on the electronic displays which claim to count down the minutes until the next bus is due. This works on my usual relatively quiet route, but isn't great at a stop serving lots of different buses. Then I just flag down whatever comes along and smile apologetically at the bus driver if I accidentally hail the wrong bus. Apart from being embarassing for me and annoying for the driver, this has also meant that I have unwittingly flagged down the odd lorry too. Sometimes I ask other passangers (or my kids) to tell me what is coming. This can be a nice way of engaging strangers in conversation.
And bus numbers are not the only problem. Recently, Oxford station reorganised which buses use which stops. There are four stops on the station forecourt so I really need to know where my bus is going from. There was no additional signage or news alerts about the changes. Presumably the operators thought that passengers would notice the changes themselves.This is not easy to do when you can't see the numbers and rely on habit and precedent. I was halfway to Rose Hill before I realised my mistake.
The problem with all my techniques for working out the buses is that they take away my autonomy and put me in the position of having to ask. They make me feel apologetic for even wanting to get a bus in the first place.
The RNIB's 'Stop For Me, Speak to Me' campaign is aiming to make drivers and buses more vocal. Why not shout out numbers, destinations and stops as a matter of course? Why such a conspiracy of silence?