Post-Covid transport policy and ‘Eco-Ableism’

Today I read a news report about a disabled woman in Brighton who has been left trapped in her home since January by a road closure the city council has imposed on her street as part of a pedestrian zone in the city’s restaurant district, North Laine. Ann Ingle is unable to use a wheelchair and needs to park her car right outside her flat, which she has lived in for the past 15 years; as a result, she has not left her flat since the closure was imposed and has had to delay important medical appointments. The street was previously pedestrian only on weekends and bank holidays, then all week with a disability exemption on weekdays. The council was until last week controlled by the Green Party, albeit as a minority; there is now a majority Labour council though it is unclear whether they intend to address Ms Ingle’s concerns. The same party (in coalition with the Liberal Democrats) has been responsible for the situation in York, where disabled residents with Blue Badges have been prevented from parking in the city centre for the past few years; the Lib Dems have used counter-terrorism as an excuse, but it is clear that they see disabled car drivers and the needs of residents generally as an inconvenience to their ‘ideal’ of car-free city centres.

In 2020, the Covid lockdown made people realise how nice it was to have quiet streets that were easy and mostly safe to walk down. After it was lifted and leisure destinations began to reopen, more people used their cars than ever before as buses were still seen as unsafe; while there was no rush hour to speak of as many people still worked from home, the roads were congested almost all day. Councils imposed “low-traffic neighbourhoods” and Transport for London stripped out most of the parking and loading bays along its “red route” network so as to enable social distancing outside shops in places like Tooting. The upshot was that the remaining roads ground to a halt. Many of the early low-traffic neighbourhoods have been removed, but the enthusiasm for pedestrianised streets and cycle paths has persisted. Here in Kingston, for example, cycle lanes have been built along a number of main roads, including the London Road and the main road to New Malden and in the case of London Road, bus lanes have been removed to make way for them; in other places, it is no longer possible to pass stationary vehicles on the left, as the space has been redesigned as a cycle track. In Brentford, a two-way cycle path has been installed on the Chiswick High Road just north of Kew Bridge; this has resulted in one of the eastbound lanes being removed, resulting in tailbacks for miles on the South Circular approaching Kew Bridge. There is no bus lane; buses are being caught in the car traffic which has no other reasonable way to go.

This seems to reflect a policy of using congestion as a deterrent to car use, but it isn’t working; roads are backed up for long stretches with cars idling, pumping out fumes into areas where there are shops and cafés, which is not good for air quality for them or for people who live nearby. The cycle lanes are in between the road and the pavement, so cars have to turn across them and buses stop next to them, requiring passengers to cross it (and the cyclists to stop or swerve). However, the disablism here is that not only are the fit, young, healthy and able-bodied who can cycle (or rather, will do when it is not raining) being favoured over not only those who just prefer to drive, but both are being preferred over other groups of people, including elderly and disabled people, who need to use the bus. Bus services are being degraded as buses are getting caught in the same congestion as the undiminished car traffic. TfL have announced a new set of “superloop” express buses around the suburbs of London which is to include the X26 from Croydon to Heathrow via Kingston, but this service will not function very effectively if it keeps getting stuck in traffic on roads which have been deliberately narrowed for cycle lanes.

These are inconveniences; some disabled people are being shut out of their cities or shut into their homes so that council leaders on a mission can pretend that it is possible to have a car-free city in the 21st century, that tourists can shop and eat in a street that is actually people’s home, unaware that they exist, or get a sense of an ancient city untouched by the modern (except the smartphones they bring in, of course). It’s fair enough that non-disabled people give up some conveniences for the good of the planet and for everyone’s health and quality of life, but not that people’s actual physical needs be sacrificed for a middle-class green ideal.