Turn to Public Transport

Izzy: Hello, and welcome to the Carbon Copy Podcast with me, Isabelle Sparrow. 

Brad: And me, Bradley Ingham. 

Izzy: We’ve arrived at the next episode in our series, Do Something Bigger, which is all about finding ways to take collective action for climate and nature where you live or work. 

We’re releasing a new episode every two weeks throughout the year and exploring topics from agriculture to energy and everything in between. So if this one’s not for you, why not go back to our previous episodes to find something that might be? Today’s episode is called Turn to Public Transport. 

Brad: Yes, we’ve really pulled out all the stops for this one. Bus stops, tram stops, train stops. 

Izzy: OK, let’s stop there. 

Brad: All right, let’s get back on track. 

Izzy: Public transport in the UK has, let’s face it, sometimes had a bit of an image problem from strikes to engineering works to unreliable services and sky high fares. It’s not all that surprising that car use dominates the mobility landscape in this country. 

Brad: Yes, absolutely. And in fact, shockingly, the most recent data from the Department for Transport shows that 85% of kilometres travelled in the UK are by car, van or motorbike.  

Izzy: Yeah, that’s quite the stat, isn’t it? And I suppose it’s particularly concerning when you think that actually the majority of people live in towns and cities, places that in theory should have good networks, and yet they’re not being utilised anywhere near as much as you might expect. 

Brad: So addressing this is very much the point of the Campaign for Better Transport. 

Founded over 50 years ago in 1973, the campaign has seen attitudes and policies around public transport change and develop over the years. We spoke to Michael Solomon-Williams, head of campaigns, to learn about why there is still a need for the campaign all this time later. 

Michael: The context of 1973 was that we just had the well-known Beeching rail cuts, which had actually cut a lot of people off from the rail network around the country and had a significant impact on connectivity and well-being and people’s local lives and quality of life. This was a time in the early 1970s when the orthodoxy was that the car was the future. And you can almost sort of forgive society for having sort of going through a phase of thinking, oh, this exciting new technology will all be free. You know, won’t it be great? Because it was sort of new at the time. And we did slightly overlook the fact that children aren’t going to be driving. Elderly people aren’t going to be driving. Actually, creating car dependency has really negative impacts on people’s lives. And there was unfortunately, there was a period of time when government didn’t realise that. And what we did in those days was actually change government from thinking it’s all about building roads and cutting railways to actually realising that more railways is actually better for people. And actually, perhaps we don’t need to keep cutting roads. 

So we have changed the dial. And I’m happy to say, although it may not seem massively obvious, but it’s true that in 2025, we’re now in a situation where railway lines are being reopened rather than closed. So that’s been a long, a long burn, but it’s happening now, which is really, really good news. We’re also in a situation where bus services are potentially being reformed. Now, for bus, unfortunately, the picture has not been as good recently as rail. We’ve seen bus services increasingly cut and people cut off as a result. But we are now in a situation where bus funding is being allocated according to need, thanks to our research. And there’s a real prospect of an exciting time for bus regulation and management because of what’s called franchising for some authorities or enhanced partnerships for others and effectively allowing local authorities to run their buses where that works. 

For your listeners, it may seem, how do I engage with public transport? It’s all sort of organised by other people. It’s easy to feel cut off from the decisions. But actually, I would offer a lot of encouragement in the fact that we now have some government policy proposals which are really seeking the public’s views, one of which is bus reform, the other of which is rail reform. And the third big one, which is a really very public focus, is called the Integrated National Transport Strategy. Now, that’s really all about how connecting all those different modes, rail, bus, tram and walking and cycling affects people’s lives. And government’s emphasising that it wants to hear from people. And we’re supporting that in a critical but positive way. So, it’s actually a relatively exciting time to be trying to engage as individuals in improving the public transport network around this country. 

Izzy: So that piece about connecting the different modes of transport together, enabling people to make longer and more complex journeys without the use of a car, is something especially relevant to our next guest. Neil Barnfather is Chief Commercial Officer at Good Maps, an app designed to improve navigation and mobility for passengers of public transport. Neil explained how the idea for the app came about and why it’s needed. 

Neil: GoodMaps was founded originally with the purpose of helping blind and low vision people navigate indoor complex environments. We use computer vision as a form of technology to solve for this, as opposed to installing beacon networks and other traditional location based technologies. The product has evolved substantially over the years, away from simply helping persons who are blind and low vision to encompass the needs of a far broader range of audience participants. When we think about this, what we mean is we’re helping as many people as is possible navigate spaces which may be unfamiliar to them or where accessibility may be an additional requirement. 

The issue that we were looking to solve for really stems from a few things, specifically when you look at a blind or low vision person. Firstly, you can’t access traditional signage. Secondly, you can’t easily, often readily identify a person who might be placed in that position to assist. So you can’t spot necessarily the high vis outfits or a particular uniform and so forth. And then thirdly, it’s often very difficult to utilise herd mentality. So a lot of people will arrive at a venue and sort of say, well, a thousand people are off that way. 

That’s likely the direction I need to go. 

So those three clues that most people traditionally utilise are out the window if you cannot see what’s happening around you. And whilst there are physical adjustments to the environment that have been put in place, many people will be familiar with tactile lines and tactile strips and so forth, there’s been an ever increasing focus on putting them as almost guidelines in large public spaces. So people will go to an airport, for example, and find there’s a long tactile strip sort of almost aimlessly roaming through the airport. The problem is that they were originally designed to help from the drop off point outside to the first manned service point. And that was it. They’ve subsequently ended up placed in a huge variety of places across these spaces. And all it’s done is led to confusion. 

No one actually understands what they do and where they go. So that was the key problem. And those are the current methods really of solving for it in a physical environment. 

I’m now completely blind and I’ve previously had sight. I’ve been in the complete blindness space for around 20 years now. And I always talk about this in the context as when I could see to go for a major railway term and I was about a four minute transition. Get off the train, follow the herd mentality, maybe have a glance at a few signs and off we go. And when I became blind using passenger assist, as good as it is, it’s a minimum of a 15 to 18 minute experience. And that is the absolute – that’s some of the fast times. It can exceed an hour sometimes if it’s busy, if you haven’t pre-booked. I now in a GoodMaps venue can pass through that same station and I’m back to my five minutes that I was when I could see. 

And more importantly, I’m back at retail opportunities. I’m going and getting a coffee. If I’m travelling at lunchtime, I’m going and spending money and getting some food. It really has reopened all of those opportunities and possibilities. And there’s an emotional knock on benefit because I feel like I’m back doing what I used to do. So there’s a huge amount of benefits to providing this sort of technology. 

Brad: What a brilliant idea for an app. It’s really hard to imagine just how challenging it would be to navigate around a busy station. I mean, I find it hard enough when I go down to London just to find my way around. But yeah, to not be able to see where you are, it must be really difficult. But as Neil explained, a lot of disabled people have no alternative other than to use public transport. 

Neil: For most disabled people, there isn’t another option. And in fact, ironically, we end up hugely overpaying because of the cost of utilising public transport these days. I mean, you know, you can have a disabled person’s rail card with a one third off the fare. But at the end of the day, if I still have to travel in peak times because, you know, I go to work and therefore I’ve got to be at the office for nine a.m. and so forth, my rail fare is massively disproportionate compared to the cost of car ownership, car taxation, managing and servicing that vehicle, and then the fuel and the parking at the other end, even with the third off. 

So government policy, thinking about welfare reform and so forth and thinking about costs, the costs of being disabled just in a transport context are grossly inflated in comparison to the wider populace who have choice. And if we want to fix this problem across the board, we’ve really got to look at the cost economics, but particularly for disabled people who I don’t have that choice at the moment. I don’t have the opportunity not to use a bus or a train. I can use taxis and so forth. But it’s extremely cost prohibitive once that becomes your lifestyle choice, your only option. 

Izzy: So I stupidly hadn’t really thought about the fact that for some people, the only way to get about is on public transport, because for, you know, whatever reason, whatever disability they have, that there are not ways to adapt a car to that disability. I mean, sight loss is a very good example. You can’t drive if you’re blind. So to have that choice completely taken away and then, yeah, have this kind of Hobson’s choice situation where the thing that you can do is insanely expensive, it just it must make people’s world so small. And that’s it’s terrible. You know, it’s terrible to think that people get stuck in one place, essentially because they can’t afford to leave or to move about. So what can we do about this? Clearly, public transport needs to be cheaper as well as easier to use. I spoke to Michael about the Campaign for Better Transport’s campaigns to help more people make the choice to use public transport and how these could open up far more affordable and accessible options for lots of different people. 

Michael: Many rural communities, which could be the places that used to have a rail line, they had buses put in to replace that rail line. Then those buses, in many cases, were cut. 

That gateway to using public transport is often the bus stop. And we’ve identified the fact that there is a national standard for railway stations. So every railway station has up-to-date timetables and digital information. There’s a national standard for information on board buses only since last year. There’s no standard for bus stops. So I would really encourage people to get behind that campaign, support that, because that’s going to be ongoing for a couple of years. 

If you imagine that everywhere that has a bus stop has something which people can really trust and rely upon and they feel that confidence, they go to it and go, all right, that’s when the next bus is coming. OK, that timetable has been updated. You can’t believe in a bus stop that you turn up at and it’s a flagpost with an outdated timetable, nothing digital. 

You really can’t believe that. So I think that’s a huge opportunity. I’d really encourage people to engage in that campaign in particular. Otherwise, there are things that we’ve seen to be effective, such as simple and affordable fares. So we had a big impact on getting the two pound national bus fare cap through. And that had a huge impact on bus ridership. 

It wasn’t all about affordability. In many cases, it was just simplicity. Oh, it’s a bus. 

Tap on, two quid, done. We don’t need to get into the sort of nitty gritty of some journeys were actually less than two pounds, many were more, whatever it might be. It’s gone up to three pounds now. And we while we regret that it’s not two pounds anymore, we welcome the fact that it’s still a cap and it’s still simple. And so these things really matter. So I would support our campaigning work to maintain bus fare caps. I’d support our campaigning work for rail fares to be reformed. Now, there’s a big opportunity here to sort out rail fares such that they are partly that they’re simpler, but also more affordable. That’s, in the case of rail fares, that does need to be an affordability element, because in many cases, particularly turn up and go fares are too expensive for many people. I would support our campaigning on rail fares, certainly, because that’s key to getting people to take the train. 

In terms of other modes, there are three main public transport modes. We haven’t talked in great detail about walking and cycling, but I mean, every public transport journey is often an active travel journey, a walk to a stop or whatever. The third main mode, which has been a bit of a forgotten one in this country, I’ve mentioned it already, is trams and something really important about trams in that data has shown that a large proportion of tram riders, I think it’s about 20% were formerly regular drivers, whereas it’s about 2% for bus users. And while buses are vital and they’re in many cases the quickest and best thing to fund and implement, trams do take longer. They’re better for what we call mode shift, which is getting people to change from one mode to another, getting them out of the car onto public transport. Trams really do that. It may be a status thing, but it’s more really a reliability thing, a confidence thing. They’re frequent. They do all have stops with the elements that railway stations have, digital information, up to date timetables, high capacity. And very importantly, they’re accessible. You know, accessibility is a big barrier. We’ve got a quarter of the population with one or other form of disability. And accessibility is a huge challenge to get people to use the railway network because, you know, loads of railway stations aren’t accessible from street to platform or from platform to train. Buses in many cases aren’t accessible for wheelchairs and mobility impaired. Every tram network in the country is fully accessible. 

So I would really support our work to progress the case for more trams in the city regions. It’s a very good time for the public to be engaged in rail reform and say, OK, you’re sorting out our railways. How’s that going to impact me? You know, what do I really care about? I care about the fact I don’t have a railway station. You know, therefore, get in touch with us. Say we need to ensure that network expansion is a key part of rail reform. We need to ensure that there’s a passenger growth target. We need to ensure that there are really ambitious targets set into this rail reform programme rather than just, oh, we’re nationalising railways and that’s done.  You know, it needs to be something which offers an opportunity for really making change. 

Izzy: We hope you’re enjoying your ride with the Carbon Copy podcast today. If you know someone who you think might be moved by this episode, please let them know about it. But of course, wait till we’ve reached our final destination. Thank you. 

Brad: Carbon Copy is all about local action. So whilst our first two guests are helping change things in lots of places around the UK, we wanted to speak to someone creating change in a more grassroots way. Yeah, and Shahiesta Raja, Education Development Officer at Community Rail Lancashire definitely fits the bill here. She’s transforming local attitudes towards train travel and introducing new communities to the joy of life on the railway. 

Shahiesta: The railway’s quite a particular demographic in some ways, because it’s especially up north where we are. It’s not particularly multicultural, I don’t think. When I started this job, I think I was the only South Asian heritage person doing this. And it was quite natural for me to link up with people that are a little bit like myself. So I started to link up with community groups that were not the usual demographic, really. A few years ago, we had lots of groups of refugees coming into the country from Syria in particular, but then Afghanistan and other parts of the world. And obviously they had to learn English as well. They were doing employability classes. They were trying to figure out their new home and how to get around.  

So I linked up with those organisations as well. And we started to work with lots of different groups to sort of teach them how to use public transport, particularly trains, and how to do that safely, because I realised that people that come from other countries, the rail system might be very different in that country, or they may not even have one. You know, some people would never have travelled on a train ever. 

The group that I set up, it just came about quite naturally because a good friend of mine who I’ve known for a very long time, she started to struggle a little bit getting out of the house and felt a bit isolated. So I started to bring her to work with me. At Accrington Railway Station, we have, we call it the bunker. We have an office underneath the ticket office. And it’s a really lovely space. And we usually bring children from schools there to do lots of different activities. So I started to bring my friend to work with me. And she said, this is such a nice space and a really safe space. Could I bring somebody else that I know? And then it sort of grew from there. And from about three or four people, we’ve ended up with around 20 women that used to come regularly on a Tuesday morning. 

..It was somewhere for them to go, but it was also a safe space for them to talk about whatever they wanted to talk about. But then I used to get them on the train from there as well and just go to very local places, go for a walk, go for a cup of tea and then come back again. And it just started to give them a bit of confidence. And so they were able to start doing short journeys by themselves. And some of them were like myself, born and brought up here and just lost some confidence over COVID. And some of them were women that had got married to people here and then come over maybe 30 years ago and just not use trains because they’d never needed to. They’d either driven or been driven around in cars and never really needed to use trains to go anywhere. So they started to sort of realise that they could go to quite local places and lots of green spaces. We’re very lucky up north. We’ve got lots and lots of green spaces and they’re easily accessible by trains, most of them. And it was quite nice for me to introduce them to that.  

So that went on for about, I think, three or nearly four years now. And then last year I said to them, would you like to adopt a Crinton railway station? And they didn’t know what that meant. But we adopted the station, which it meant essentially that they were looking after the station and they were looking after the planters on the platform. We are lucky enough to have a little community garden and they were looking after that. They would do some artwork. They would do, sort of, in Ramadan this year, they gave out bottles of water to people that were fasting and people who weren’t fasting. They were just trying to create awareness of what it was all about. And it’s been a really nice little group that have ended up sort of looking after the station as if it’s their own because it is their own. 

My job is really amazing because it creates a sense of belonging for people, I think. These women all live close by, but have never really considered the railway station as somewhere for them. They’re all Muslim women. They wear hijabs. And I think they feel like they belong in areas where there are other people like them. But one of my aims was to bring what they do in their own community into the wider community and help them to understand that public spaces are theirs as well. And so now it’s really lovely when people see them on the platform looking after the planters and in their highways and their hijabs. …And people get off the train and ask them, sort of, what are you doing and how come you’re doing this and what’s this all about? And then compliment on how nice things look at the station and everything looks a little bit more looked after. And from my experience, when the station is looked after, there’s less vandalism, there’s less graffiti, there’s less anti-social issues. And I feel like because they’re seen to every week and people see them in their highways and they look very official, they look like they’re looking after and cleaning up and tidying up. 

People sort of are very respectful of that, I think, and try to keep it like that. 

Brad: I love how this has grown into a real community building thing. And it’s transformed a part of Akron for these women. They feel like they belong there now. And I love this idea of adopting a station too. 

Izzy: Yeah, me too. I used to live near Heaton Chapel Station on the edge of Stockport and Manchester. And that had been adopted as well. And there were always lovely flowers and murals and things. And it made waiting for a train just so much nicer. 

Brad: Again, I think it comes back to that thing of local action being a joyful, positive thing, as well as it also being good for the environment. 

Izzy: Well, yeah, actually, I mean, very little of what we’ve talked about with the guests for today’s episode was actually about environmental sustainability. Although obviously taking public transport does tend to have lower carbon emissions than driving and certainly better than driving a diesel or petrol powered vehicles. 

Shahiesta: Part of what we do when we go into schools or community groups and talk about rail travel is that it is a sustainable way to travel and it’s becoming more and more so as trains are becoming more and more electrified. It is becoming a more sustainable way to travel. Trains carry more people than buses and planes. You know, you can carry maybe 600 people on some trains. And so it is a sustainable way to travel when you think of it like that. It’s helped me to walk a lot more, which I didn’t own a pair of trainers before I started this job. And it helps me to walk more, which means I actually feel a lot better. 

Izzy: It’s a really interesting point that Shahiesta makes there about walking more now that she uses the train more. And obviously, you know, for some people, walking isn’t necessarily something that they can do if they’ve got a disability. But, you know, for most people, walking is a good thing. Like being more physically active is a good thing or riding your bike is a good thing. And that sort of link between active travel and therefore improved health and well-being is something which maybe people wouldn’t necessarily think about in relation to using trains. But that’s just an added bonus, really. You know, unlike when you drive a car, you basically tend to park right there wherever you’re going to. And then you’re straight, you know, straight out of your car, straight to your desk at work or. into the shop if you’re going to the shop. Whereas, you know, having that little extra bit of movement in your day is it’s got to be a good thing. Right. And, you know, it’s all about ways to make life holistically better, not just about, you know, the eco stuff. 

Brad: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I remember I didn’t have a car for a very, very long time in Manchester. And I just it would just be public transport, trams, trains. And yeah, you’d have to set off a little bit earlier. But, you know, you’d be walking around and you’d see things that you wouldn’t normally see. I think it does make you more grounded. It’s better for your mental health. It makes you a more rounded person. So like she said, it isn’t necessarily the most convenient thing. But I think if you can put aside the extra time just to do it every now and then, that can make a big difference. Neil told us about how good maps is currently being used and how there was a need for the technology to be adopted more widely across the country. 

Neil: In 2024, we facilitated over 40,000 uses alone on the UK rail network. And that number has exponentially grown this year as we’ve continued to add rail networks and additional stations. The more the network of venues mapped expands, the more a person is inclined to say, I can start here and end here. .And that’s the key to the success of the technology being available in a larger number of venues. One of the biggest challenges we have today, we often hear about the north-south divide as a positive towards the south and a negative towards the north. In the good maps world, actually, we found it’s very much on its head, whether it’s TransPennine in the north, our relationships with C2C and Tranitalia out in the east, right up through the Avanti West Coast partnership and the LNER partnership on the east. These absolutely focus on the Midlands up to the north. And yet we have very little public transport exposure in the south. This basically means that if you’re someone like myself living in the south, you’re completely cut off and 100% left to human in the loop passenger assistance. We totally need to bring in consistency and an ability for people to have that experience that begins at one point and ends at the other point. We need to ensure consistency across the network. 

Izzy: Yeah, that’s really interesting. And one thing that Neil also told me about, which we haven’t necessarily included here, is how in different places around the country, different technologies are being adopted. And a lot of it has to do with procurement processes and competitions and all that kind of thing. And I understand why those things exist.  And certainly having worked in public sector organisations before, I completely recognise how this stuff happens. But when you think about the end user of these products and of these services, you sort of think, well, actually, the fact that there isn’t any consistency, the fact that a passenger can go from one place where they’re using one particular system to find their way around the station and then end up in a station where it has a completely different system, that’s just really unhelpful. They’re not going to be able to make that journey in a way that is comfortable for them. And they’re going to have to, I don’t know, download multiple apps or have like a huge list of different things that they need to prepare for each place they go to. It just doesn’t really feel like it’s a joined up way of thinking at all, which, you know, when you’re talking about transport, kind of doesn’t really make sense. 

Brad: Yeah, definitely makes it sound a lot more stressful than it needs to be. I think the inconsistency thing is pretty relevant when you think of how rural areas are served in comparison to urban. Michael explained how people living in more remote and rural places were being supported by the campaign for better transports work. 

Michael: Many of the places I referred to earlier on lost their rail network in the 60s. That doesn’t have to be the end. And as I’ve demonstrated with Northumberland line, that was closed in the 60s, the Dartmoor line was closed in the 60s. These lines are gradually reopening. We are actually really keen to campaign on the fact that there was a programme called Restoring Your Railway, which was recently cut. And this is perhaps a way of emphasising that we support government when it does the right thing, but we criticise it when it doesn’t. And we didn’t agree with the decision to cut the Restoring Our Railway Fund. We felt that was sort of bad optics and not the right thing. What we want to see is an improved version of the Restoring Our Railway Fund. We think it’s vitally important. 

And many of your listeners who might live in really isolated areas probably don’t live far from where they used to be a railway line. And if you have a look at our website, our most popular web page is the Reopening Rail page. It’s got a long, long list of lines organised according to priority. And some of them are now, they’re out of date because they’ve been reopened. You know, so I would say, look around, see, has there ever been a railway in this area? Is there a case for there to be one again? If there hasn’t been, then there could be a new one. But if there was before, actually reopening often has a good case to be made for it.  

So I’d look at that. I would then look up this INTS we call it, the Integrated National Transport Strategy. There is a real emphasis on public engagement. I would then see if you can engage directly with government on the INTS. I would then also recommend talking to your local politicians, of course, your MPs. If they’re really keen to engage in public transport improvements, they will often take your local concerns and actually channel them through people like us to influence government policy. So there are many, many ways in which you can engage. What’s quite exciting when we’re addressing these challenges is that more and more people are realising the impact of public transport disconnectivity to their wider lives, to their wellbeing, to jobs and opportunities. More and more people are sort of making that link and going, hang on, you know, my area isn’t just cut off because it lost its industry, it’s cut off because it lost its public transport. 

You know, there are places that, go back 100 years or so. Many of the UK’s city regions and coastal communities had electric public transport, you know, in the form of trams. You think about it, it’s sort of wild to think that everywhere was kind of all right. 

The cycling was five times as common as it now is, although that’s increasing. But it was much more common for people to cycle. It was safer to cycle. There were trams everywhere. You know, it’s not wrong to imagine that these things could come back, but in a new, more effective way. So I’d encourage people really to engage their local politicians on this and say, look, we’ve had it before, we deserve to have it again. And that would make our whole community the richer for it. 

Brad: Well, that seems like a pretty good vision of the future to me. And that richness and connectedness is certainly coming through in the stories we heard from Shahiesta about Accrington. She told us a really moving story, which just perfectly demonstrates how much of an impact all of this can have. 

Shahiesta: There’s one lady I need to tell you about who’s part of this women’s group now, and she joined last year. And within that time, her sister, I know she won’t mind me telling you about this, but her sister fell quite seriously ill and was in a hospital in Blackpool. And her husband had been driving her there in the mornings and she’d been spending the day at the hospital and then coming back. She then contacted me and she said, is there a train that goes to Blackpool from Accrington? Because it’s becoming quite difficult for my husband and my children to keep dropping me off. And the traffic’s awful in the mornings. They have to go to work. And then I try to stay in a hotel that is too expensive to keep doing that. I said, yeah, there is. 

And I showed her how to get on the train. We you know, she had travelled with me a little bit, but she hadn’t travelled on her own. So I spoke to the conductor. She got to Blackpool and then she was telling us about it a few days later, she says she met a lady on the train who and they exchanged numbers and they are still in touch. This lady helped her to get the bus from the railway station to the hospital. And they check in on each other. And she said it changed her life. And it meant that she didn’t have to depend on anybody. 

She was able to get to where she needed to get to without bothering anyone. It gave her the confidence to just be able to get on and off trains all the time.  

And she understood the timetable, she understood departure boards, and she understood what to do when there was a platform change or anything. Within a few months, it’s given her so much confidence. One of the things I’ve said to her is that once things settle down, and her sister’s a bit better, she needs to do that journey, she needs to lead that journey for the rest of the group, just so that they are aware how to use the train to get to Blackpool, from Blackpool railway station to the hospital, because it’s a life skill. And it’s something that, unfortunately, at some point, we’ll all probably need to do. She’s described it as life changing, because it means that she doesn’t feel like she’s putting anybody out. 

And she was the only person that would go and visit her sister, and it gave her sister that 

connection that she needed as well. So for me, I was in tears when she told me this, because anybody who knows me knows how much I love my job, and this is why I love my job. 

Izzy: I really love that story. It’s just so incredible how something which feels really quite simple can change someone’s world. And this is absolutely what Neil and his team at Good Maps are doing as well, right?  

So, creating a world where travel for people with all sorts of accessibility needs is easier, safer, and just generally more enjoyable. We asked Neil what people can do if they want to find out more, or to support the rollout of the technology in other places as well. 

Neil: If people are interested in not only becoming involved and helping spread the word as it were; firstly, goodmaps.com/advocacy has an array of information and a toolkit. If you’re interested in having GoodMaps deployed in your venue, there’s a toolkit for: “I use this space and I would like the venue owner to deploy”. And there’s a toolkit that helps people who are the venue owner. 

We would obviously encourage people to reach out and get in touch. The more people that 

express interest, the more easier it is to spread the network. Try it out. Give it a go. Provide feedback. If you enjoy the service, if you found it helpful, tweet about it, put it on LinkedIn. 

Tell your friends. We need people to have awareness.  

Brad: Well, I don’t know about you, Izzy, but I feel like I’m seeing public transport in a bit of a different light. It’s not just about getting from A to B. It’s about the experience, about the places where you start and stop your journey, and also about the people that you meet along the way.  

Izzy: Yeah, Shahiesta had some lovely thoughts about this. So let’s hear from her one more time before we sum up. 

Shahiesta: I’ve always travelled on trains. Trains have always been something that I’d introduce my children to. I have lots of nieces and nephews who are now grown up and wouldn’t be seen with me… But when they were little, there was seven or eight of them, and it was easier to get them on a train to go to St. Anne’s or Blackpool or to the Science Museum in Halifax or wherever it was. It was just easier. So I really enjoyed it. And I couldn’t understand when people hadn’t travelled on trains. I just couldn’t understand it. I 

always found it easy. I found it convenient. And the delays and things didn’t used to really bother me. I expected them, and it just never bothered me, really.  

So when I got into this, I found it amazing that there were adults that had lived in this country and never travelled on a train. I found it a really positive thing to be able to introduce them to it. It just opens doors for people, and particularly, I think, women, particularly women from different ethnic minorities or anybody who’s new to the country. 

Travelling on trains just takes you to green spaces. It shows you different ways of getting to the same place. You can look out of the window and just see greenery, and it just makes you feel better. And I was a real stressy person, and I still am to a certain extent. I’m a natural worrier. But if the train’s delayed, it’s delayed. There’s nothing I can do about it other than just go with it. And it’s helped me to just calm myself down a little bit. I just think it’s a lovely way to travel. 

Brad: So let’s sum up what we’ve learned in this episode.  

Izzy: Well, I think I’ve really had a bit of an awakening to the challenges of being a blind or partially sighted person or actually anyone with an accessibility need trying to move around the country. It’s really exciting to hear about technology like GoodMaps and how that is making things easier. 

Brad: Yeah, definitely. And I’ve learned about some of the potential developments that will hopefully make public transport a bit easier to use for everyone. Like, for example, the introduction of a bus stop standard. 

Izzy: Yeah, that one would definitely make life easier. We’ve also learned how communities can be brought together by travelling together on public transport and by sharing the responsibility for managing spaces like Accrington Station. 

Brad: And finally, we’ve learned about ways that you, the public can get involved and support local and national efforts to improve public transport for everyone. 

Izzy: You’ve been listening to Do Something Bigger from the Carbon Copy Podcast. It was written and presented by me, Isabelle Sparrow.  

Brad: And me, Bradley Ingham. 

Izzy: Thank you to our guests, Michael Solomon-Williams from the Campaign for Better Transport, Neil Barnfather from GoodMaps and Shahiesta Raja from Community Rail Lancashire. And thanks to you for listening. More information about all these organisations and about everything we’ve talked about is available in the show notes. And remember, if you like the episode, we would love for you to review it wherever you normally listen. Our next episode is called Produce Local Food, when I’ll be joined by Kiloran O’Leary from Sustain. So if you want a taste of that action, subscribe now! Until then, goodbye.