the wheels on the bus

There is a case going to the supreme court this week about whether wheelchair users should have absolute priority over other passengers on buses.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/09/wheelchair-pram-bus-space

I have to be clear, I hate travelling on the bus with my pram, I prefer the tram. On the rare (now impossible) days that I used to take my daughter out alone on the bus there were plenty of times I had to wait for the 3rd or sometimes 4th bus to get on. This was usually for something important like a doctors appointment for her (I rarely travelled on the bus on my own with her unless essential). I left plenty of time and made sure to accomodate the wait time into my trip.

Anyway, that aside that is not the main problem I have with this case. It places "disabled people" at odds with "parents and children". I am both a disabled person and a parent. The fact that the bus can get my pram on actually enables me to travel, just in the same way as a wheelchair user experiences. I do not, when I am on my own with my daughter have the capacity to fold down the pushchair. It is not a simple case of inconvience for me, it is a case of being impossible when I am on my own.

There are other areas where there is an unfortunate clash of needs, namely in the toilet areas, where disabled peoples needs are usually met in the same space as parent and childrens needs are. There is no particular priority given to either group, it is simply a shared space and we take it in turns to use its shared facilities. its not ideal, but it works. I personally think its the same with all areas. We share our spaces with others in all aspects of life. Why is it so hard to share the bus space with others who may need it equally?

Yes, a wheelchair user can only use one space on the bus, so can the disabled mother with the pram. I am concerned that in the future I could get on a bus at one end of town and be asked to leave by the other end of town, forcing me to have to go back to the first stop, because it is the only stop I can get on to ensure I can get on with the pram, just because a wheelchair user gets on after me. I too may have had to wait 3 or 4 buses to get on too. I also have places to go of importance. It isn't easy for any of us with wheels, we should work together.

I want to leave you with a story from last week. Our daughter was ill, and needed to be taken to the out of hours doctors which involves two buses and about a 45 minute journey. It was 10 o clock at night when we set off. We have no car, and therefore no car seat. A taxi wasn't an option for us as its against the law (and common sense) to travel without one. We managed to get on all the buses we needed with our sleeping and ill daughter in the pram. If we had been forced to get off the bus for a wheelchair user we would have been literally stranded in an unfamilar area late at night with no way to get home or to our next destination, with the buses being every half an hour, it would have also meant we had lost the doctors appointment, starting the process all over again.

Not only that we were so lucky to get the last bus from the doctors into town with 2 minutes to spare. Again, with a sleepy and ill child in the pram. If a wheelchair user had got on, would it be right that we would have been forced off into the night, because they have "more priority".

Im not suggesting that it would be right to leave the disabled person there either, and thankfully where we live there is space for both. What I am saying is that sometimes it might involve some negotiation of the limited space available. we could move the pram around, etc.

There are no easy answers to this