Ex-Paralympian Tanni Grey-Thompson forced to ‘crawl off’ train
Tanni Grey-Thompson, the former Paralympic athlete, has spoken of her anger after being forced to drag herself off a London North Eastern Railway (LNER) train because no staff were there to help her.
The multi-gold-winning Paralympian said she was left stranded on Monday night at London’s King’s Cross station on a train from Leeds as she tried to make her way to Wednesday’s opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games in Paris.
She said: “After 16 minutes of sitting at King’s Cross, no one in sight. I’ve got a few bags – had to chuck them on the platform, get out of my chair, sit on the floor right by the door, which is not particularly pleasant, and then crawl off.
“I can’t crawl, but had sit on the floor, drag my legs, pull myself across the floor, and then make sure I didn’t lose my shoes or my phone, down the platform. There was no one around. I was pretty angry last night I have to say.”
LNER said it was investigating the incident.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Lady Grey-Thompson said she was still furious because of the continuing barriers to travel that hampered disabled passengers.
She said: “I’m still quite angry this morning, because I can still just about get off the train if I have to. There are loads of people who can’t.”
During the incident Grey-Thompson pleaded in vain to LNER for help in a series of messages on X as she waited for assistance. One said: “Hey @lner my train has arrived at KGX and there is no one to get me off.” Another said: “@LNER who do I need to call to get off this train !!! It got to KGX 10 mins ago !!!!!”
Later she posted: “At 22.17 (train got in at 22.02) I decided to crawl off. Had to move all my stuff onto the platform. Member of cleaning staff offered to help. They’re not insured.”
Grey-Thompson told the Today programme: “[Other disabled] people don’t have my profile. If they can’t angrily tweet or get this sort of help, there isn’t help for a lot of other people. Other people would have just been left in a much, much worse situation than me. It’s got to change.”
Grey-Thompson said she was finally helped when a train manager on a service heading back to Leeds saw her on the platform.
She said: “If they hadn’t have seen that, I don’t know whether I would have got off. I would have had to pull the emergency cord and then delayed the train going north.”
Grey-Thompson said she initially booked assistance on the 7.15pm train to London but missed that train and had to take a later service.
She said: “Disabled people have a legal right to turn up and go. So I had booked assistance, but I hadn’t made that train. I am allowed to turn up and ask to get on a train. My view is once somebody has put me on a train, I have a contract, which means somebody should meet at the other end. The booking system is not particularly fit for purpose. Every train company does things slightly differently.”
She said level boarding for disabled passengers was supposed to be introduced in January 2020 but “every single government has kicked the can down the road”.
She added: “It is now going to be 100 years before we have level boarding and I can get on a train without the permission or support of a non-disabled person. It’s an old network. I accept it’s not cheap or easy to do. But at what point is the government – any government – going to step in and say ‘OK, we need, we need to make a change’.”
LNER said: “We are sorry to understand that there’s been an issue at London’s King’s Cross station on Monday evening. We are in the process of investigating this and are in contact with the customer directly.”