Architects - Join the 21st Century!

There are some news stories that really get my goat - mainly where they relate to the gross incompetence of people paid by the public purse for professional services that they plainly do not understand. The news this week that Network Rail is paying a taxi service to ferry passengers with mobility problems to access their newly refurbished platform at Newport Station is just such a case. Here we have a ludicrous stop-gap measure not because of some difficulty in adapting an old building that predates the enlightenment of the Disability Discrimination Act but because a newly built public facility treats such access as an optional afterthought. It is said that a lift will be put in place in time for the 2012 Ryder Cup. Staggering. The roll call of those at fault here must be amazing. Architects and professional building advisors; local authority planning officers and councillors who presumably granted consent; Network Rail who commissioned the project and presumably dictated the specification. The list goes on. Even without the requirements of the DDA the morons in this chain of command have clearly never manouvered a push-chair or carried luggage while changing platforms at a railway station. And on purely commercial grounds why on earth are they continuing to design facilities that serve to deliberately exclude a sector of paying customers? But now that we have the DDA there is surely a moral if not legal case for

1. remedying the situation forthwith

2. calculating clearly the additional costs that have been incurred as a result of treating core provision as an afterthought;

3. surcharging all of the culpable individuals in said chain of command for those costs as well as imposing punitive fines on their companies; and

4. sending all concerned back to college to learn the basics.

If the platform had been commissioned and put into use before someone had remembered to install lighting, the opening would have been delayed until the problem had been corrected. Why should basic access be treated any differently?

And why oh why can't architects and civil engineers - supposedly creative people - not recognise the wonderful opportunity for original thinking that a new build project offers in this egalitarian age. The principle of universal access should be feeding the creative juices and generating new mindsets in design - not being perceived of as an irritant foisted upon their profession.