New West Midlands Trains - Livery c**k up?

[Joseph_Pestell]

New Bombardier units for Cross-City are being featured on BBC Regional TV today.

 

Yet another livery. A purple colour with contrasting orange doors. So far so good: but they have also painted (or vinyled) the ends of the coaches in the same orange colour. Surely the whole point of contrasting colours on doors is to help people with visual disabilities? How long before one disappears down the gap between two vehicles? 

[black and decker boy]

there have been 172s running in this livery for quite a while and the first 196s have been delivered and are on test now too.

[fiftyfour fiftyfour]

The daft Avanti livery duo of Pendolinos (390155/156) have contrasting coloured doors but the door and surrounding panel colour changes along the train length, so how on earth a partially sighted person is supposed to determine where the doors are on those is anyone's guess.

[Wheatley]

But look how dynamic and fresh it looks now that the designer has been freed from the constraints of having to fit a yellow end in. He's been able to concentrate entirely on his remaining two crayons. 

[black and decker boy]

The sister livery to WMT, the LNW green is a cunning attempt at wartime camouflage 

 

 

https://flic.kr/p/27HuU1e

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

1 hour ago, black and decker boy said:

The sister livery to WMT, the LNW green is a cunning attempt at wartime camouflage 

 

 

https://flic.kr/p/27HuU1e

 

 

There seems to be a special compartment at each end for the LGBT community.

 

But, seriously, that has the same issue of carriage ends being painted the same as the doors, negating the whole point of doors being painted a different colour to the bodywork. This should surely be raised with the people responsible for application of the DDA compliance.

Edited September 11, 2020 by Joseph_Pestell

[Bill Radford]

2 hours ago, black and decker boy said:

The sister livery to WMT, the LNW green is a cunning attempt at wartime camouflage 

 

 

https://flic.kr/p/27HuU1e

 

My thought exactly!

[great central]

20 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

This should surely be raised with the people responsible for application of the DDA compliance.

 

I think there's quite a few things should be getting the attention of someone to do with the DDA regarding sight impaired people. Unfortunately due to my employer I can't say any more in public.

If anyone here is a member of the public surely they can raise their concerns?

[Joseph_Pestell]

1 hour ago, great central said:

 

I think there's quite a few things should be getting the attention of someone to do with the DDA regarding sight impaired people. Unfortunately due to my employer I can't say any more in public.

If anyone here is a member of the public surely they can raise their concerns?

 

You are right. All very well commenting here, but it needs to be raised with the appropriate people.

 

So I have written this morning to West Midlands Railway. I will see what their reply is before taking it up with any higher authority. I would imagine that would be ORR and/or Health & Safety Executive.

 

I have had to write to my MP on other issues recently. But perhaps it should be raised with him as well. I could copy in MPs for other constituencies served by West Midlands Railway and London North Western.

[wombatofludham]

I think it's a bit more "nuanced" than it first appears.

I was involved in setting the spec for Midland Metro way back in the dark ages and at the time the Disability Unit of the DfT were involved in drawing up and researching the requirements that went into the DDA and Accessibility regs for all public transport, with buses being first in the queue.  We (I in the main) liaised closely with the unit as it was likely we'd be entering service at about the same time as any Act or Statutory Instrument came into force.  As a Town Planner, I'd only had very limited involvement with access issues, so I had to learn very quickly, including meeting with groups advocating for the various access groups representing physical, mental and visual impairment, to come to some sort of solution that could, as best as was possible, meet the sometimes conflicting requirements for the different groups.

The need for contrasting doors is a simple yet effective idea.  However, most travellers with visual impairment will go through some sort of "training" before undertaking a journey, as they are to an extent less confident about making a solo journey from new.  By "training" I mean getting to know their way around the system, where doors are in stations, where steps or obstacles are, and how to board and alight from trains.  As such, coloured step edges, contrasting handrails and paint colours on pillars, good lighting and yes, contrasting doors are aids, not the primary source of information.  They will also use other senses to provide clues - the chimes of the door opening mechanism will confirm if they are in front of a door or the space between the carriages, the movement of people on the platform, the movement of the doors themselves, will all feed into the process of locating the doors.  Also on the 196, the doors are clearly contrasting with the purple bodyside and are door shaped, whereas the orange on the ends is a less defined shape, longer and decidedly un-door shaped.

I would agree painting the ends in the same colour as the doors is not the best idea, and of course not every visually impaired person will do a "run through" before taking the train but as we are talking about people with some residual vision, such as the ability to distinguish colour, outlines or perhaps something like tunnel vision or macular degeneration where some peripheral or core vision remains, having learned a huge amount from the truly world beating Disability Unit of the DfT, and some really good activists in the field the overwhelming majority of whom had disabilities themselves, I don't think the risk is as great as might first seem.