F E AT U R E
Ramp Rage A founding member of Access Thanet, a disability campaign group in East Kent, looks at designing landscapes fit for disabled people.
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Christine Tongue
Access Thanet
As you get older, gravity becomes your enemy. Your legs need help from sticks and wheels, and your surroundings take on a whole new aspect – often hostile! I have been dependent on a walking stick for many decades, but recently I’ve gained a new lease of life by acquiring a mobility scooter. But I’ve also become a Dalek — before they learned how to fly. Steps can stop me in my tracks. My town, Broadstairs, is a small Victorian seaside resort, with narrow streets, listed buildings, music festivals, and Dickens Week, where the whole town dresses in crinolines. 40
It’s beautiful. But for people with mobility problems, it’s a nightmare. In my scooter, I depend on dropped kerbs on the pavements to get me from one side of a road to another. But they’re in short supply, and in many streets, I have to depend on houses which have drives and dropped kerbs for their cars. With narrow pavements blocked by parked vehicles and A-boards, I’m constantly being forced into the road. In the centre of Broadstairs, on the other hand, is a kind of shared space, made of bricks, and with rounded kerbs marking the road edge. My scooter can easily move from pavement to road with only minimal shaking. Why aren’t all kerbs like that? Our main beach, Viking Bay, has a tiny harbour and all the facilities a day tripper could wish for. But not for us wheelies! To get to the beach there are steep slopes on two sides — a scary trip for me, as tipping backwards is1always a hazard on a scooter — but
if I were in a wheelchair, it would be nigh-on impossible. Down to the harbour is another steep slope. It’s all ancient stuff: the arch over the road is probably Tudor and can’t be widened, and so it narrows to a single track with no pavement. This means, again, I’m forced into the road with the traffic. Most drivers are nice and wait for me to go through, but why can’t priority be given to pedestrians and wheeldependents? (Speed bumps, by the way, give me bigger bumps than cars so that’s not the answer.)
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1. Parking on narrow pavements and accross dropped kerbs. © Christine Tongue
2. Shared space in Broadstairs. Rounded dropped kerbs. © Christine Tongue
