In many areas of the country there is specialist door to door training aimed at disabled people often called ring and ride, dial-a-ride or something similar. They are often a cross between a taxi and a bus, providing door to door transport around the houses as each vehicle may pick up and drop off a number of people on the way.


Since the transport is often free or the same price to a bus fare, on paper this seems ideal to those journeys which are complex by bus but where time is not an issue, expect for one thing. The problem with many of these services is, well, to be blunt, they can be quiet patronising.


By I mean that these services can be institutionised into a way of thinking where they  believe they are doing their users a big favour. Rather than empowering disabled people to access their community, the true purpose of the service is even to transport older people on mass for their weekly planned outing shopping or to the bingo hall.


For younger disabled people who want some street cred, this can be quite off putting and it is therefore an hidden barrier to transport which needs to be considered.