Ros on the bus! Accessibility and public transport

“Quick!” said my sister as we rushed down the driveway and round the corner to the bus stop. She pulled elastic loops from her school bag and handed them out to me and my other sisters. When we were hidden from the house by trees she helped each one of us to roll the bands of our school skirts up to shorten them. She was the oldest and in high school, and she knew how important it was to be fashionable.  

The old orange school bus arrived at 7.30am each day. We lived on a farm 50kms from town, so we spent almost as much time on the bus each day as we did at school. Catching the bus was an education in itself, and not just in fashion etiquette. As the bus rattled along the gravel road we made friends and enemies, and had our first romances. We sorted out hierarchies, choosing seats according to popularity and seniority in our little universe. As we bounced along the country roads the older kids organised games. We played elastics in the aisle and sometimes sang songs in rounds.  Once we turned onto the bitumen road and started picking up the ‘town kids’ we settled into our seats and read books or talked quietly. On the way home in the afternoons we stopped at the country store at the railway siding a short way from our farm, and picked up bread and the mail for Mum. If I was lucky, I would have a few cents of my own to buy a little white paper bag of lollies. Five cents went a long way in those days.

I continued to catch buses after we moved into town, and then again when I moved to the city to go to university. But that all ended in the early 80s when I got a car. Since then, I have always had a car, with hand controls when my legs became weak from MS, and later a wheelchair hoist on the roof. I can go most places with my car and my manual wheelchair, although I am hampered frequently by the lack of a parking space wide enough for my wheelchair, or by an inaccessible building.

Recently I decided to try public transport again. Elizabeth Quay had just opened with a lot of hoopla and fanfare so I decided to find out what all the fuss is about. 

I was quite nervous about this adventure wondering if I would find myself stuck on the side of a road somewhere with no way to get home, so I was very glad that this first time I would have a friend with me. 

First of all, I looked at the Transperth website where I found a friendly invitation to ‘Plan My Journey’ which I did, discovering I could catch a bus from near my house and then get the ferry across to Elizabeth Quay. I had heard that not all buses are wheelchair accessible, but no matter how hard I looked I could not work out whether the bus I would be catching was able to take my wheelchair or not. In the end I rang their inquiry number and was transferred from person to person until I found someone who could assure me that the bus would be catching could take a wheelchair.

In the end I had no reason to be anxious. Our journey went swimmingly. The bus pulled up to the stop just around the corner from my house and the driver, with the flick of a switch, lowered the bus to the curb. A small ramp flipped across to bridge the gap so I could roll in easily. My friend and I paid our fare and enjoyed the short trip to the ferry.

Boarding the ferry was easy, with a gently sloping ramp to the entrance, and I felt like Queen Elizabeth herself on her Royal Barge as we crossed the river to her Quay! 

I admit I was fairly underwhelmed by the development itself, but to be fair it was a quiet day and maybe the ugly unfinished building site next door didn’t help. A plate of sweet potato chips with rosemary aioli from a food kiosk improved the ambience of the place.

We wandered around for a while testing pathways and in general all seemed to be pretty accessible. Even the cobblestones weren’t too bumpy.  I checked out the toilets (of course) and gave them a tick of approval. After I posed for a photo under the arch we caught the ferry back across the river and a bus back home.

I have avoided the city in recent years, finding it too daunting with all the traffic, changes to the roads and difficulty finding parking, but having made the trip by public transport with a companion I was feeling a lot more confident. 

When a friend invited me for lunch one day I decided to leave my car at home and found myself with the whole city before me ready to explore. My world has grown just a little bit bigger.