Specifying wheelchair_boarding for a platform which isn't accessible from outside, but accessible for interchange purpose

[miklcct]

Describe the problem

The current specifying on the wheelchair boarding says that:

For child stops:
0 or empty - Stop will inherit its wheelchair_boarding behavior from the parent station, if specified in the parent.
1 - There exists some accessible path from outside the station to the specific stop/platform.
2 - There exists no accessible path from outside the station to the specific stop/platform.

Unfortunately it isn't possible to specify that it is possible for wheelchairs to change trains even if it is not possible for wheelchairs to get out of the station.

I would need a way to specify the wheelchair accessibility islands within the station.

Use cases

I want my journey planner to tell wheelchairs to change trains between the platforms of the same direction at Stockwell or Finchley Road.

Proposed solution

Add a field wheelchair_accessible in pathways.txt with the same enum values of wheelchair_boarding in stops.txt and wheelchair_accessible in trips.txt.

wheelchair_accessible	meaning
0 (default)	No information is known if this pathway is wheelchair accessible
1	This pathway is wheelchair accessible
2	This pathway is not wheelchair accessible

If there exists a sequence of pathways where wheelchair_accessible all have a value of 1 between a pair of platforms, wheelchair interchange between these platforms is possible, even if the platforms have a wheelchair_boarding value of 2.

Additional information

No response

[jfabi]

@miklcct, are the station pathways specified to include vertical circulation elements like stairs, ramps, and lifts? If this is for journey planning purposes, OpenTripPlanner and others support routing users via only step-free pathways, I believe. Station entrances should also have a wheelchair_boarding value specified that could help with this, even in the absence of intermediate pathways.

So perhaps, then, a question might be whether it would be valid for you to set the platforms to value 1 but every entrance to value 2?

Regardless, I agree that the wording of the wheelchair_boarding definition doesn't address this scenario—it may be worth clarifying either the expected behavior in the case that the parent station has defined entrances, or how pathways should or shouldn't interact with stops' wheelchair_boarding values. For example, should the field take on a different meaning for platform stops in the presence of entrance stops?

[miklcct]

It would be great but it is against the specification, as it specifies the accessibility to be from outside the station.

[leonardehrenfried]

OTP does indeed prevent wheelchair users from being sent across stairs and escalators: https://github.com/opentripplanner/OpenTripPlanner/blob/f4bfedfc41d3b92df45927a72edcab28624510d6/application/src/main/java/org/opentripplanner/transit/model/site/Pathway.java#L91-L93

This is also true when the slope of the pathway is too steep although I cannot remember what the limit was.

So the information is not expressed in explicit wheelchair accessibility, it exists and OTP uses it.

[miklcct]

I think the most pragmatic solution is just to leave this value out from my feed, then OTP can calculate it from the street network.