It is incredibly difficult to hear so many people in the environmental movement continually lionise trains as the answer to all transport needs.
Being a full time mobility aid user with chronic fatigue and sensory overload makes use of public transport nightmarish.
If *real* efforts were made to make every train and every station fully wheelchair-accessible, *without* having to rely on unreliable or downright abusive station staff to put ramps up and, down, it would be a fantastic *start*. On good days, I *might* be able to use it for certain kinds of journeys.
However, it still wouldn’t solve the issues with sensory overload, or the problems getting to train stations from my home due to severe chronic pain and chronic fatigue.
If overdo it when I’m out, I *crash*. I cannot expend all my resources getting places. I then cannot do anything when I am there, and am unable to get home safely.
This is not that uncommon a problem. My issues are due to hEDS, POTS and autism, but they are incredibly common symptoms of Long COVID and ME/CFS resulting from Long COVID. So, unsurprisingly, folk with these needs are becoming increasingly common as Covid continues to rampage through the population. *Some of us need transportation we have control over*, and we need environmentally sustainable options to do this.
While expanding the public rail network, making it completely affordable (or, realistically, free) and making it fully accessible for wheelchair and other mobility aid users, children travelling alone from about age 8, elderly people with limited eyesight and hearing and parents travelling with infants would be an *incredible* start and massively increase usage of public transport, there are those of us who will always need at least part-time access to vehicles which can come to our homes and that *we* have control over, that are just as affordable as public transport, and the environmental movement needs to acknowledge this, plan for it, and stop treating it as selfishness, laziness and all the other “fun” terms disabled folk face constantly just for trying to live, especially outside our homes.
This is going to be even more the case if you want us to be able to work outside our homes and if you continue to be resistant to providing fully remote jobs that pay a living wage.