Guest blog by Isaac Harvey
I have been a public transport person for pretty much my whole life. As a wheelchair user, getting around independently requires planning, but trains, buses, and the Underground are what I grew up using. Living in London, they have all been my go-to for travel.
And when it comes to going out of London, the different types of National Rail have also been something that I’ve got used to over the years. I genuinely enjoy public transport. I like going through different stations, meeting different support staff on and off the train, taking in the view from the train window, and sometimes having conversations with strangers. For me, that’s part of travelling.
So spending a few days with a wheelchair-accessible vehicle from Open Road Access was always going to be interesting. I wasn’t expecting it to turn me into a car person, but I didn’t expect it to make me think quite so differently about having a choice.
The Journey That Didn’t Happen
My relationship with ORA actually started in a very unique way. In 2024, I took part in a wheelchair roller skating challenge with Wheels and Wheelchairs, where we skated all the way from Brighton to Paris for the start of the Paralympic Games. We visited a retirement home along the way and were later invited two years later for a reunion-style trip to spend more time with the residents.
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The logistics quickly became a lot. We would be staying in gym halls, meaning bedding and sleeping equipment alongside everything I normally travel with. Taking the Eurostar and continuing beyond Paris with my wheelchair while whoever travelled with me carried everything else didn’t feel particularly practical. I started researching wheelchair accessible vehicle hire and found ORA. Quite amusingly, when I first made contact, their CEO already knew of my work and had apparently been thinking about reaching out.
The Paris trip eventually fell through for reasons outside my control, but the relationship with ORA continued. From the very beginning, their team was incredibly supportive, asking about my needs, explaining the process, and making sure everything could run as smoothly as possible.
Then I was invited to a friend’s wedding in Oxford and hadn’t booked any travel for it. And that’s when everything clicked again; maybe it was finally time to give ORA a go.
A Different Kind of Journey
The vehicle was delivered directly to my home, and the person delivering it from Proximo properly explained how everything worked. I entered using the rear ramp while remaining in my Series 5 wheelchair. It was secured at the front and rear before a seatbelt was positioned around me. Once packed, one thing was immediately obvious: we had space. For a wedding involving luggage, clothes and everything else that comes with going away, not having to carry it all through stations was very welcome.
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However, as I regularly reposition myself to relieve pressure on my legs, the belt at one point moved to my neck whilst in motion. It showed how important it is to get positioning right for the individual wheelchair user before setting off. The journey also highlighted what I missed about public transport. From my position in this particular vehicle, I couldn’t see out particularly well, and I missed the people, views and interactions that come with trains.
But there was another side to it. There were no platforms, changes or booked assistance. We didn’t have to travel from East London into Central London first to catch another train towards Oxford. If we wanted to stop, we could stop. That became useful because the air conditioning in this particular vehicle didn’t seem to reach the rear properly and I became quite uncomfortable with the heat. Eventually, we stopped for something to eat and opened the doors to get some air.
It was something I fed back afterwards, but it also demonstrated an unexpected benefit. On a train, as a wheelchair user who usually needs assistance to get on and off, I can’t simply decide halfway through that I want to get out for a while. Here, we could.
Realising I Didn’t Need to Find a Bus
Once in Oxford, I caught myself automatically wondering which buses we would need to reach the different wedding locations. Then I remembered: we have a vehicle. It sounds obvious, but when you’ve spent your life planning around public transport, that thinking becomes automatic.
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We could travel from our hotel to the different venues, use my Blue Badge to find accessible parking, and eventually drive back after the after-party. It meant much less mental energy going into connections and how we were getting home. Even stopping at a petrol station was strangely interesting. I’ve travelled in plenty of accessible taxis, but for a few days we had a vehicle available to us,s and I was experiencing all the ordinary things that come with that.
When Being Late Didn’t Matter
Before heading home, I discovered something I probably should have known: the River Thames runs through Oxford. So, we decided to explore and somehow ended up getting slightly lost. By the time we found our way back to the vehicle, we were later than expected.
Normally I’d be thinking about whether we’d missed our train, what happened to our tickets, ts and whether passenger assistance could accommodate us on another service. This time, none of it mattered. The vehicle was there. We could leave when we were ready. That control over our time was probably one of my biggest takeaways from the experience.
A Week Later, It All Made Sense
Only around a week later, I attended a charity event pretty much in the middle of nowhere where public transport was pretty much nonexistent. I travelled there by accessible taxi, but when it was time to leave, no taxis were being allocated. After waiting around an hour, we gave up and started making our way towards another transport option. This meant navigating a narrow pavement beside moving traffic and getting through overgrown bushes before eventually finding a route back towards London.
Suddenly, I thought about Oxford. Having a wheelchair accessible vehicle wouldn’t simply have been more convenient that evening. It would have got us home rather than wasting time and energy going down paths that were not suitable.
Oxford didn’t turn me from a public transport person into a car person. I don’t think anything will. What it did was make me realise that accessible travel shouldn’t be about having one option that works most of the time. It should be about having choices. Sometimes I’ll happily take the train, meet people along the way and watch the world go past. Other times, having an accessible vehicle could make the difference between worrying about how I’m getting home and simply getting home.
After finally experiencing ORA for myself, that’s a choice I understand and appreciate much more than I did before.
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