In this episode, we look at how walking and public transport can be safer, more accessible and more welcoming for people with disabilities, long-term conditions and those with dementia.
Our Senior Development Officer Carl Greenwood and guests Andy Hyde and Hussein Patwa explore what constitutes an inclusive journey, and how design of our transport services can be more inclusive.
Our experts discuss the challenges that face people with disabilities when making journeys, and the impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the way we access and experience travel and transport.
We also look at what opportunities COP26 has created around establishing a low-carbon public transport system that works for everyone.
To find out more about Andy or Hussein, or learn more about the issues discussed, check out these useful links:
https://twitter.com/upstreamscot
The Drawing from Experience comic book mentioned in the podcast https://www.upstream.scot/dfe
https://twitter.com/hussein_patwa
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hussein-patwa-4ab1551b/?originalSubdomain=uk
In this episode, we look at how walking and public transport can be safer, more accessible and more welcoming for people with disabilities, long-term conditions and those with dementia.
Our Senior Development Officer Carl Greenwood and guests Andy Hyde and Hussein Patwa explore what constitutes an inclusive journey, and how design of our transport services can be more inclusive.
Our experts discuss the challenges that face people with disabilities when making journeys, and the impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the way we access and experience travel and transport.
We also look at what opportunities COP26 has created around establishing a low-carbon public transport system that works for everyone.
To find out more about Andy or Hussein, or learn more about the issues discussed, check out these useful links:
https://twitter.com/upstreamscot
The Drawing from Experience comic book mentioned in the podcast https://www.upstream.scot/dfe
https://twitter.com/hussein_patwa
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hussein-patwa-4ab1551b/?originalSubdomain=uk
Introduction Welcome to Voices of the Walk, Paths for All’s everyday walking podcast. Our mission is to get Scotland walking. Everyone, everywhere and everyday. In this podcast series, we’ll be hearing from a variety of Scotland’s walking champions, who are helping to make our vision a reality.
Carl Greenwood Hello, my name is Carl Greenwood, Senior Development Officer of Paths for All’s dementia friendly walking project. And for this episode of Voices of the Walk we’re going to be hearing from two guests about how we can make the experience of walking and using public transport safer, more accessible and welcoming by including people with disabilities, long term conditions and dementia in the design and delivery of services.
Our first guest is Andy Hyde from Go Upstream. Andy has been working with disabled people, focusing on people with dementia, for five years now, aiming to design more inclusive journeys by bringing people together with service providers to learn, work and design together.
We’re also delighted to be joined by Hussein Patwa, Hussein is registered blind and also suffers from chronic pain. He is an accessibility consultant, including ten years experience advising on accessible transport and journeys. He’s passionate about technology, inclusive communications and developing processes and solutions that work for everyone. In his free time, Hussein enjoys acoustic rifle shooting, music, reading, playing with gadgets and DIY. So, welcome both, and could you start by telling us a little bit more about yourselves and what you do. Can we start with you, Andy?
AH Sure, hello there! Yes I’m Andy. I guess the story started a good few years ago when I was working with people around Scotland looking at the kind of services they access to keep healthy and well in their local area. And I started to notice that one of the challenges that they talked about a lot was getting to and from the services. And so we started to think about the connection between transport, mobility, connection and health and wellbeing. And that took me into working with groups of people with dementia, asking about their challenges getting out and about and then started to bring service providers into that conversation.
So, what I’ve ended up doing from that, I guess, is to work with people with dementia and people with other disabilities to bring them together with service providers to create a shared understanding of what the challenges are along the journey, and then hopefully work together to try and find the solutions, design the solutions together.
CG And Hussein, same question to you. So, if you could tell us a little bit more about yourself and how you got interested in this topic.
HP Thanks Carl. It’s good to be here, thank you for having me. So, I’ve always been interested in travel and transport and have always recognised that transport is one of the key enablers to everything we do in life. And, years ago, I joined a group that was involved in championing for accessible travel and later on got a job advising both government and operators on various aspects of travel accessibility. And hand in hand with that, as a disabled person, technology has always been a key enabler for me, something that’s given me access to communications, to media and also to opportunities as well. And I felt it’s important to take the two hand in hand, and even more so now as technology advances. And over time I’ve realised that communication is just so important and inclusive communication especially presentation of information to people. There’s also a recognition that you can just go out and find whatever it is you need. But the planning of that, and it’s not just basing it on an assumption that people will find what they need to know. But actively designing that into the process of your service or product is so important.
And that’s become a real passion of mine, to bring all that together to create a package that, as you said during the introduction, just works for people out of the box. Travel, journeys, shouldn’t need to be something you actively work at, it shouldn’t be something that stresses you out or causes anxiety. Hopefully, things that I do, things that Andy does, working together and bringing more people on board, we can get there.
CG In the introduction we mentioned inclusive journeys, and Andy I was just wondering if you’d be able to paint a picture of what an inclusive journey looks like, what do we mean by that term?
AH Yeah it’s an interesting one because, I guess I started off this work thinking of transport, you know, the vehicles we get onto to get to places, and when we started to talk to people about how they got around, getting out and about, we realised that many of the challenges that people experience are in between the transport services or before and after. So, whilst the accessibility and inclusivity, if you like, of the vehicles and the very transport related services are obviously important, it’s those other experiences that are equally important that we get right in order to make it an inclusive experience.
Journeys are really complicated, you know, Hussein’s just been talking there about how stressful they can be, and lining up those different stages of a different journey, those different experiences we have, the different environments that we move through, is really important to think about every step of that journey and, you know, often journeys can start weeks or months before we actually step out the door. Hussein was saying about planning, you know, everything is in the planning. So, for me, a journey can start way before we actually leave. Obviously, many, many experiences during that movement then being at the destination. And what we often forget about is getting home as well, often think about getting there but getting home is so important.
So, yeah, for me, an inclusive journey is something that is a collection of services that have been designed to enable people to move from different parts of the journey to the next in an independent and easy way. And an enjoyable way, as well.
CG Hussein, you mentioned, you know, some of the barriers and some of the challenges particularly around technology, communication. What other challenges do people with disabilities face when making journeys, either on foot or by public transport?
HP I think the end goal for everybody, you know, we all want to be able to get around independently in the ways we want, where we want and in the way that we want. But recognising the fact that that’s not always possible and that sometimes we need a little bit of help along the way, whether that’s someone physically assisting you around a train station, whether that is having a ramp to allow you to access different levels of a building or to be able to get onto public transport on the first place. Or whether that’s interpretation services or making the language that we use, easier to understand.
And I think, for me, the way we provide the assistance, and making sure that the interaction is as seamless as possible, but even before we get to the point of providing any help to anybody, knowing what help is available is often the first challenge. And obviously, aside from that, you’ve got the physical infrastructure barriers, making things step free or catering to disabilities, contrast, lighting, providing good sound experiences for people, coping with fatigue, ensuring that there are rest facilities or comfort facilities wherever we go, all of this just blends together, and you can’t take any one of these in isolation. Either any one of these can break a journey or together they can just turn what should be a pleasurable experience into a nightmare.
CG Would you be able to describe some of the projects that you’ve both been involved in to try and remove some of these barriers and, you know, tell us who you’ve been working with and the kind of work that you’ve been involved with. And, Andy, would you like to begin?
AH Yeah, sure. I guess the important thing for me is the projects that we do should be based on and grounded in what people tell us are the important problems to solve. And so, a few examples of the things that I’ve been either leading or been involved in. Toilets are just such an issue on journeys, it just comes up in every conversation. You know, finding a suitable toilet along your journey, as Hussein says it can make or break, some of these things can make or break a journey.
So, we ran a project a few years ago asking disabled people to head out and record experiences of what it was like to find a suitable toilet along the way. But also, even some of the detail, you know, things like, how easy it is to use, different ways of turning taps and all this kind of thing can really make things quite confusing. So, yeah, we’ve looked at toilets, we’ve looked at use of technology, and one of the projects we were all involved in was making connections, a few years ago, where we were looking at the spaces between transport services.
So, you get off one service, you have to get on another but there’s a space in between, it might be crossing a road or it might be walking a mile, but somewhere along that connection there will be challenges and support that we need. But who’s responsible for that? And who can make a change if we find that there is a challenge there? so, we did a big piece of work there looking at the connections between rail services and ferry services and found, not only found a number of challenges, but I think we started to develop and refine a method by which we can get people together. An audit is probably the wrong word but certainly an assessment and a way of again, bringing the service providers in to start to design some of the solutions.
CG What has the reception been like from transport providers? Because with that project you were working with real services and ferry services, how did they receive the project?
AH Yeah. It’s a really good question actually and a number of people have asked about this. And I think, for me, the key thing is to get everybody involved from day one. Well, I hope, I think, because we’ve got service providers into the room from day one, and started to talk to our participants and started to walk and move through these environments with our participants from day one. They started to get a sense of what the challenges were and why they were challenges. And, kind of got bought into that fact that they could make a change for people. And also learn that, I think, some of the changes that we need to make are really quite small but transformational.
So, I think if we don’t simply provide a list of things that are wrong, and we actually bring everybody into the conversation, actually the reception we get is pretty good. In fact it’s very good, I think people are keen to make a change and keen to change the service. And to design with people if they have an opportunity to. So, I think this work is about creating that shared understanding and then providing opportunities for us all to work together to design solutions together.
CG And Hussein, is there a project you’d like to describe that you’ve been involved with?
HP I’ve been involved in quite a variety of projects, similar to what Andy was describing. Everything from spending a number of years focusing on transport policy in a number of areas and providing, along with others, my lived experience as a disabled person to make sure the roles and policies are fit for purpose, and they cater to the needs of people and take their needs into account.
I’ve done mystery shopping for a couple of the rail operators, that was really fun. Being able to go and try and break something and then provide constructive feedback, not only for bits and pieces that need improvement but also things that they’re doing well, I think it’s really important to provide positive praise, give people that encouragement that what they’re doing is working and, where needed, what they’re doing is working but they could do just a little bit more.
I’ve been involved in producing training videos for industry bodies, again around rail, specifically focusing on the need for good passenger assistance and informing members of staff about what they can do to improve their offering. And I’ve also done quite a lot of website testing and app testing for transport providers to make sure that on the technical side, for those that are using assistive technologies such as screen readers, the offering and the experiences are as seamless as possible because, as we’ve already touched on, it’s quite often the case that if you have a good experience of planning your journey and preparing for it, it gives you a degree of confidence that hopefully your journey when you do get travelling will be just as good and those two have to go hand in hand as well.
AH Yeah I think what Hussein was saying there about positive feedback is so important, actually, and I hope that some of the work that we’ve done has enabled the service providers to hear that whole range of comments from people and to experience it with them.
And I think, you know, we talk a lot about training and awareness and feedback and actually if you spend a morning with somebody working through your service or travelling through an environment with somebody all of that just happens, you know, you learn a little bit about someone’s life and how their disability might affect their life. You learn a bit about how your service works really well and how it doesn’t work so well. And, you know, you start to make friends and you just, yeah, you start to build relationships and I think that more collaborative way of working brings all of those things into the fold. And you do learn about how things work really well which is so important.
HP I think over time we have become a lot better at how we critique services, how we review them. If I remember a few years ago, people would just, pun intended, they would rail at something how bad it was. And they would always talk about the way things go wrong and you’d always hear about the negative experiences. But now increasingly you find people who say, well actually this was a little bit difficult, but you know something, this is the thing you maybe think about to improve it, these are ways in which you could better your service.
And if you’re prepared to do a little bit of work in that area, come back to me when you’ve done that and I’ll go over it with you again, make sure that you’ve actually hit the nail on the head, that you’ve done things that are gonna generally benefit people. And I think service providers and operators are seeing that for the positive benefits it brings. And this is leading to better relationships between providers and their customers. And they’re starting to see the value of having disabled people on board, having any number of customers on board to make sure the offering works for everyone.
CG I think that’s a really good point and a lot of the ways of working that you’ve been describing, that kind of collaborative approach, bringing people together, you know, thinking about who we work with at Paths for All in other areas of work, that way of working could be replicated. So, how can organisations ensure that the voices and experiences of people with disabilities or long term conditions, think about the actual process of working?
HP I think it’s always critical to remember that the earlier you get people involved in your service design, whether that’s a new service or whether that’s thinking of making changes to something that already exists, the sooner that process begins the better it’s going to be because even just simple from a cost perspective, it’s always easier to build something new than it is to try and retrofit something that you’ve already built and later realise, hold on a second, maybe there’s a better way of doing that.
Getting people in from the outset is so important because then you can carry them with you as you go through that process. And you know that when you get to the end you’re getting something which is going to be designed with the input of the people that are going to use it. There’s really no point in designing something that isn’t going to meet the needs of your customers. And having that dialogue is really important. Something that we’re starting to get better nowadays as well is, you get people round the table, or you walk through a service with them, you get their feedback. And before, you wouldn’t hear anything back, people often felt, well we’re sort of just being dropped here, nowadays, often you will have folk coming back and saying, the work that you did with us before, thank you for that. Here’s what we’ve done to show you that we’re going in the right direction. And people feel valued, people feel respected and they feel like their input counts for something. And that’s really important, that to and fro, give and take is part of the whole process.
AH Absolutely, and I think this idea of inclusive design, it’s worth stepping back and thinking, if we’re going to create ‘inclusive services’, and I’m doing air quotes, then our inclusive design process should be as inclusive as possible. What I mean by that is we should design the process inclusively as well, the example I always give is that we came up with a process for discovery, if you like, walking through environments with people. We showed it to some groups, and they said well, that’s just not going to work. So, we redesigned the project process with participants so that it was going to work for everybody. So, I think that kind of meta view of what inclusion really means is important when it comes to working with people to design inclusive services.
HP I think mindset is a key part of this, as well. Before you had a very protective mindset, people were worried about opening up their services in case things were found not to be as good as they could be. It’s also really important about how you ask the question. So, some providers I work with say look, just take your journey or experience the service and just tell us what there is to tell. And you’ve got a clean slate to work with. And once that’s done, you’ll say, right, now focusing on a particular part, whether it’s signage or lighting or customer service. And you do a deep dive into that particular area. Others will turn around and say we want you to look at just this particular aspect and really go into detail as to how it is, how you experienced it and what we can do to improve.
And that openness right from the very beginning and willingness to say we’re going to get some good feedback, we’re going to get some possibly negative feedback but all of that feedback is valuable. And that brings down your, sort of, metaphorical barriers in between your service and getting people in, and that’s what it’s all about, it’s about having a level playing field for both sides. Your customers and your operators say, yeah we might hear some things we don’t particularly want to hear, but by hearing those things we can improve so that the next time around our feedback will be much better.
CG I think one of the things that’s always, kind of, struck me about a lot of the work that, you know, you’ve been involved with and Andy, thinking about the Making Connections project but also some of the other work that you’ve done, they’re fun, they’re good fun to be at. They’re very creative as well in terms of the way of working, you know, you’re bringing together people with disabilities, you’re bringing together the operators but also then you’re bringing a creative element as well, can you talk a little bit about that?
AH Yeah I think fun is such an important word actually. When I’ve described some of the work to people, sort of, outside of it. Yeah, I don’t think they connect the word fun with some of the stuff that we do. But as you say, I think we do have, I think it’s really quite enjoyable, I think it’s because it’s really relatable actually to everybody. We all take journeys in some ways, we’ve all had those difficult experiences, but actually, humour and light-heartedness actually seems to make it a little easier to talk about.
But I think the whole creative approach is really important because what comes out of a project or a discovery process I think is so important. Because we’re all really good at writing long reports and, you know, we might skim them and a few things might get taken onboard but I think we lose a lot of people in the way that we’ve reported on what we’ve found. So, we’ve experimented over the years with a number of different ways of getting the message across and telling the stories and sharing the experiences that people have.
A couple that come to mind, when we were working on the toilet project, it’s a pretty tricky subject to talk about for many people and it can be quite distressing as well. But we worked with a theatre group, who just did an amazing job of helping the participants to write a story and a play about their experiences and then the participants performed it. And that was one of the most powerful things that I’ve seen actually was people actually performing a story about their experiences. And it really got the message across, again, in quite a light-hearted way. You know, one minute we were laughing, next minute, penny dropped, and we realised what they were talking about.
So, that was one example, and another one was, I thought that maybe a more visual way of getting the stories across could be useful and I was looking at how people were using comics to tell stories and educate. So, we took journeys with people with dementia and comic artists and together we created a story and some wonderful artwork. And, you know, again, the pictures that can really get across the experiences that people have. And it was about forming a story and, yeah, telling a story that was meaningful, as meaningful to the participants as it was to the people that were receiving the information. So, creating accessible, enjoyable, meaningful and impactful outputs, I think, is really important. Whatever they might be. So, we’re always on the lookout for doing things in slightly different ways.
CG How’s the COVID-19 pandemic and all the changes in the past 18 months impacted people’s ability to get around? Hussein, would you be able to say a couple words about that?
HP I think it’s one of these things, Carl, where it’s been both a blessing and a curse. We have suddenly realised the importance of, for example, information provision. And you see many examples of that increasingly, I mean marketing material, more details about the type of experience people will have when they travel, what to expect before, during and after you travel, what you need to do. And all these things are becoming more prominent. It’s become a curse of course because at the same time, during COVID, a lot of changes were made very rapidly. Most notably of course to our streetscapes in the cities. And that was pretty much done overnight without any consultation.
I think in hindsight people are realising that could have been done a little better but equally at the same time it was something that needed to be done urgently. But even there, there are important lessons to be learned about how you engage and you’re seeing that in local areas where people are saying actually rather than coming back and engaging with people just periodically, why don’t we try and find some sort of continuous partnership that will then allow us to have a faster turnaround when we need to be informed by disabled people and other on changes we need to make in a hurry.
So, there’s some really good things that have come out of COVID, there are some opportunities there for working, the use of remote technology, the use of putting more things online has, I think, really hopefully will be a gamechanger on how we do things in years to come. But at the same time, yes, travel has become a lot more difficult. Just the number of things to remember before you leave the house is a case in point. And now of course with more travel routes reopening, the sheer number of changes.
I was telling Andy just a couple of days ago that I’m planning a holiday abroad myself, and the numbers of things to try and get straight in your head is just so difficult. And that’s just one example where we could really have a much better system of allowing people to understand and know what they need to do. Because that is an area where travel has definitely become more stressful. So, there’s two sides to the story. But I think where there’s a will, there is a way to learn from that and actually build that better.
CG And Andy, that’s something you’ve been doing as part of the Future Journeys observatory work that you’ve been leading on over the past, what, almost 18 months now? Can you tell us a little bit about that please?
AH Yeah well it was, you know, quite a time, March 2020. We’d been, obviously doing the work that I’d been describing, we’d been getting people together, we’d been travelling through different environments together, meeting at railway stations, airports, ferry terminals. And suddenly the world stopped, I mean literally pretty much everybody around the world stopped travelling, were told to stop travel. And, so, yeah, just wondering, how do we respond to this? And how do we continue the involvement and participation of people in designing services. So, I started to talk to a few friends online and Hussein was one of them and we were wondering, well, there were lots of changes happening exactly as Hussein was saying, lots of changes happening overnight, often without including people on designing what those changes might be. And understandably things had to change really quickly, but what was our response going to be and what would our journeys in the future look like? Both during a pandemic and post-pandemic.
So, we just started to have some conversations that ended up on a Thursday afternoon, where we would get together online and, just in fact, wonder what was happening out in the world? What were we hearing from around the world? What were people trying out? What changes were being made? And we were wondering, how might that affect our mobility in the future? And yes, it’s turned into a weekly discussion, it’s still going. And it’s been a sort of, a fluid group of people that come every now and again. And, yeah, we’ve talked about what are our new concerns about travel? And some of them are, sort of, the old concerns and challenges that have maybe been exacerbated by the pandemic and some of them are very new things. And what was interesting for me, particularly in the early stages, was that the things that people were concerned about or certainly talking about were very much the human side of things. So, the attitudes of people that they might experience when they’re out and about, the etiquette, the new etiquette of travel, what do we need to know? What’s it like to have a conversation about not wearing a mask if you’re with somebody, that sort of thing.
Whereas the way that we were dealing with it out in the world was very physical and technical so we were taping off seats and one way systems and cashless payments and that kind of thing. So, a little bit of a mismatch in terms of what people were concerned about and what was being dealt with in the world. But it’s been really interesting. We’ve worked with, yes, ferry companies and airports and different groups over the months just sort of helping them to think through how they retain accessibility and inclusion in the way that they respond to the pandemic.
HP I think there have been a real number of positives to that, not least the social aspect of it. I’ve pretty much got Thursday afternoon blocked out in my calendar for Future Journeys and it’s something I look forward to, especially with an existing health condition it has become a highlight of my week, starting to make friends with people on the call and you know that it’s a safe space, and that is so important, it’s a space where you can talk about issues relating to transport, knowing that there are probably going to be others on the call that share some of your views or your feelings or your fears and your anxieties. But also, just feeling that we are making progress, and as Andy said, having people coming in from the airports, different travel operators, or different groups similar to yourselves coming on board and being able to talk things over with them.
And I think in a way that process has become easier because, doing things in person, you always have that, having to block out extra time and all the logistical arrangements of getting there. And by the time you got there your actual time for discussion was very limited. But being able to harness the move to doing things online, I think it’s been beneficial both for the operators, and it’s certainly been beneficial for the disabled people beginning to feed in. It’s great knowing that there are other people who share your concerns, but also, it’s a great learning environment as well. Talking to other people in the first few months, there were those on the call who had travelled out and about and were able to provide reassurance that, yes, there’s a lot of things that have changed but help is still available. Or giving tips on how travel can be made easier, or things to remember or places to go, information to get before you travel. So, I think it’s been really good, it’s been really positive. And we’re 70, I think just over 70, is it Andy? Thursdays in. And hopefully this will be something that is here to continue for quite a long time yet.
CG We’re recording this podcast on Friday 5th November 2021, when COP26 is underway as we speak, in Glasgow. One of the topics you have been looking at in Future Journeys is, you know, the move to low carbon public transport and increased promotion of walking and active travel as well. So, what opportunities are there around inclusive journeys going forward with this?
AH Yeah, it’s a really timely, timely time to be talking about this, right? Yeah, a little while ago, well actually a long time ago, I guess, it was in the back of my mind that I, we, were spending a lot of time talking about getting onto big diesel vehicles and travelling long distances and how would we, how would we bring the necessity to lower emissions into the conversations that we were having? And it was earlier on this year that it’s all started to become a little bit clearer I guess, I guess with the lead up to COP26 there was more and more discussion around decarbonisation of transport, which is, you know, a big term but a very technical term I think.
The more that I looked at it the more I was thinking, well, we’re talking a lot about vehicles and we’re talking a lot about the technology of decarbonisation of lowering emissions and we’re not really talking about how we would interact with these, with the transport. And so, I began to wonder, well how is this going to fit with the work that we’re doing? How does our ambition to make society more inclusive fit with the ambition to lower emissions, or to decarbonise in lots of different sectors but particularly in transport because it’s one of the biggest emitters. So, it feels like changing our travel behaviours is one of the biggest things that we can do individually to make a difference. But we know from our work that all the work that we’ve been talking about today, that not everybody has the same opportunity to use different types of transport. So, I began to have this idea that well, maybe, as well as talking about decarbonising transport, we should broaden that conversation out into talking about journeys. And in fact, talking about inclusive journeys and, presumably all journeys in the future will be low carbon, hopefully, so we should be talking about low carbon journeys.
So, again, just got a group of friends together and we started talking, particularly on Thursday afternoon about this about well, what would that look like? And started to come up with a process where we would, I guess, dig into some of the plans, learn about some of the plans together for a low carbon future. And as we said today that, you know, our journeys are made up of lots of different experiences. So yes, we must look at the design of an electric bus or the design of a hydrogen power train. That’s really important. But presumably, people will be designing, or will be thinking of, how are we gonna make more sustainable, lower carbon environments, services, you know, will a ticket machine be different? Will a toilet be different? Will the lighting, the heating? Will the café be different? You know? So, what we decided to do was say, well let’s break it down to those journey stages again. Let’s talk about planning our journey, getting to the bus stop, being at the bus stop, getting on the bus. And think about what changes are being made already and what might they look like in the future to make things lower carbon?
So, we’ve been going through a process recently where we did some of that, we looked at some of those ideas that people are coming up with already, we’ve already got some of these things in place. And some of the ideas that are out there in the further future, I guess. And asked our group, well what would make these more inclusive? And by putting together all of those imaginations, and we’re talking about them as ‘informed imaginations’, if you like. Maybe we can come up with a vision of what an inclusive low carbon journey might look like in the future. And if we’ve got that vision, then maybe we can help people who are innovating, manufacturing, making policy. Help them to think about that wider view of what it takes to get around in a low carbon way. So, yes it’s great that we’ve got electric buses, but can we make sure that we can get to the bus in the first place? Can we make sure that when we get to the bus station or the train station that that’s a welcoming, inclusive environment, if we’re designing it in different ways for reducing our carbon footprint?
CG So, the final question is, again, coming back to COP26, we’ve got all of these leaders and community activists and people coming to Glasgow from all over the word so, I just wonder what your message would be to the people that are gathered together for COP26, what would you two say to them if you were given the stage?
HP For me the message is, we are here, we are ready to help, come and talk to us. Look at everything that’s gone before, look at all the examples of progress that we made with transport modes that we’ve used up until now, look at all the engagement projects that have taken place and all the good that has come from it. There will be a lot of new inventions that come on board to help us move towards our goal of having zero carbon. But at the same time let’s not reinvent the wheel, folks.
Let’s look at the good that’s gone, let’s see how we can incorporate that into everything that we’re doing. First and foremost, you don’t have to do all of this alone. There are a lot of people, including disabled, that are really keen, able, willing and ready to help you along that journey because, we always say, what works for disabled people and folks with mobility challenges, often really works for the whole of society. So, it’s not just a case that we need to build something that works for disabled people, let’s build something that works for everyone, let’s start this now. Let’s move forward, together.
AH What Hussein said. I’m not sure I can top that, really. Yeah, no, you’ve said it all, Hussein, really. I’m not sure I can add to that. You know, often when we feel like we have to innovate and design and change we feel like we have to add, you know? We need to build something new, we have to design something new, we have to add a new feature. We don’t always need to do that. You know, we’ve done a lot of this stuff before. So, yeah, I don’t think I need to say anything.
CG I’d like to finish by thanking both of our guests, Andy and Hussein, for joining us today, thank you both.