On Monday last week there was a response to a written question from the Conservative MP from East Yorkshire, Greg Knight who had focused on “visually-impaired and hard of hearing passengers”. The Minister who responded was Richard Holden who is a Minister for Department for Transport. It appears that Greg was the only MP who raised this theme last week. The week before as I published in this piece there were 4 MPs who raised questions on a similar theme and the week before 3 MPs raised questions on this theme and they can be seen here. Interestingly Greg raised the theme of both buses and also trains. It will be interesting to see what the Government is going to do for trains as well as the buses and coaches as Richard Holden did not refer to trains. Anyway here is the question and answer session. It will be interesting to see if other questions and answers will emerge in the future. This is where the question and answer emerged and this is what they published.

Greg Knight: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps he has taken to support and encourage the installation of more audio-visual real time information on busses and trains for visually-impaired and hard of hearing passengers in East Yorkshire.

Richard Holden: We have required buses funded through the government’s Zero Emission Bus Regional Areas (ZEBRA) scheme to provide audible and visible information as standard. We also plan to require the provision of audible and visible information on local bus and coach services across Great Britain, and intend to introduce the Accessible Information Regulations shortly. We have also allocated £3.55m to the Real Time Information Group, who will be supporting small operators with the upfront costs of the planned Regulations. As of 1 January 2022, all passenger rolling stock are compliant with accessibility standards, including requirements for dynamic audible and visible information.