This guide is designed to help TOCs to design stations, trains and systems to be family friendly. A significant part of family friendly travel is about appropriate customer service; this can be found in our separate customer service guide, which focuses on the points in the journey in which a member of staff interacts with the family.

This guide focuses instead on the design of physical infrastructure of the stations and trains, and policy decisions around their usage.

‘Buggy’ and ‘pram’ are here used interchangeably. ‘Parent/carer’ is used here as a proxy for ‘an adult who is travelling with a child/children’.

From the doors of the station to the doors of the train

Ticket barriers

Wider ticket barriers are signposted for parents to use.

Some parents attempt to use the non-accessible barriers which close too quickly to accommodate a buggy.

Ticket barriers have the QR code reader further away from the gate than they currently are, and a correspondingly longer wait time for the parent and buggy to move through the gate.

At present, barriers are often designed not to open if something crosses the threshold of the gate. If a parent/carer is travelling with a buggy/pram in front of them, the buggy/pram will often cross the threshold as the parent reaches for the QR code reader.

In the absence of supervision by station staff who are able to check all of a family’s tickets and send the family through the gate together, TOC policy explicitly allows parents to travel through the gate on just the parent’s ticket.

Given that children over the age of 4 are required to have tickets on most services across the UK (devolved administration services excepting) the expectation currently is that parents send children through the gate one at a time, meaning that young children are for a time the opposite side of the gate to the parent, which is unsafe. Not all small children can be relied upon to wait patiently somewhere their parent can see them and be confident they will not be swept up in a crowd.

Getting to the platform

All stations have step-free access to the platform, removing the requirement for parents/carers to either lift a pram with baby inside up the steps, or remove a baby from their pram and carry them up the steps with nappy bag, luggage and pram.

Babies require at the very least a nappy bag containing nappies, wipes, several changes of clothes, muslins, and possibly bottles, formula milk powder and entertainment for the journey. This luggage is non-negotiable regardless of length of journey. For people who have given birth relatively recently they may also be restricted in how much lifting they can do without, for example, risking damage to a healing caesarean section incision.

On the platform

Baby changing facilities are in both female and male toilets.

It should be easy for all parents/carers to access baby changing facilities regardless of gender.

Baby changing facilities are in open access toilets, i.e. not in an accessible bathroom that requires a RADAR key.

The majority of parents will not have a RADAR key and may need to change a baby outside of staffing hours.

Wherever possible, signage on the platform and display boards indicates where on the platform families should wait in order to get on the train at a point in which they are most likely to find space to park an unfolded buggy.

As it stands, train aisles are too narrow for a buggy, and it is impossible for a parent to carry child, folded buggy and luggage down to another part of the train. They must therefore get on at the right part of the train.

On the train

Trains and platforms have level boarding capability.

See comments on step free access to the platform.

Trains have dedicated space for unfolded prams/buggies with seating nearby for parents. This space is next to baby changing facilities, and is available for reservation. Where seat reservations do not exist, multi-use space is clearly marked as priority for prams/buggies.

If you can change just one thing about the rail system, make it this one. At the moment, most TOCs’ policies state that buggies should be folded. This impractical for many reasons:

Babies and small children need to take naps, and the most comfortable and safe place for them to do that while travelling is in their own pram/buggy.
It is unreasonable to expect a parent to hold a child for several hours straight with no respite. Parents may travel with a sling to free up and lessen the strain on their arms but as the baby gets bigger it is less comfortable for both parent and child to have the baby in a sling while the parent is sitting down.
TOC policy sometimes states that buggies must be folded for ‘safety reasons’. It is not safe, nor even possible, for a parent/carer travelling alone to fold the buggy and stow it in overhead storage while also holding a baby. It is not safe for the parent/carer to put the child on the floor or in the arms of a stranger while they stow the buggy. It is not safe for a baby to sleep in anything other than a flat position for more than 30 minutes.[1]
A sleeping child who has just been woken in order for their buggy to be folded due to TOC policy is likely to cause a major disturbance, which is no more in the interests of other passengers than it is the child’s.
Toilets are clean and spacious with baby changing facilities designed in such a way that parents can use the toilets themselves while they have child in tow. For example, toddler restraint chairs, well positioned baby changing units, straps on changing tables.

Some trains have baby changing tables that fold down over the top of the toilet, meaning there is nowhere for the parent to put the child while they themselves use the toilet. Toddlers are notoriously curious, and highly attracted to brightly coloured buttons; being able to clip them into a seat makes it less likely they will open the door while the parent is using the toilet.

Toilets are designed to accommodate children, for example having a fold down toddler seat.

It is difficult for a small child to use an adult sized toilet in a moving train. Some children will refuse to use the toilet on a train because it is unstable and therefore scary.

Ideally, trains have aisles wide enough to accommodate a standard size buggy.

We recognise that this is out of scope for existing lines on the UK rail network given the narrower gauge of UK railways when compared to those in many parts of continental Europe, but it is an aspiration.

[1] Reference the safer sleeping expert