Chester Cycle Campaign member's mission to improve mobility aid usage wins national recognition

Eileen Morgan is the inclusive cycling officer for Chester Cycling Campaign. She has a rare spinal condition called diastematomyelia, which means she is dependent on wheeled transport for all of her mobility requirements outside her home.

Eileen tried an electric bike five years ago at a disabled charity event and it gave her a sense of freedom and opportunity that she had previously been unable to enjoy.

It began her three-year search for the perfect bike to suit her specific needs.

Eileen explained: "Cycling is one of the few activities that keeps me fit without giving me severe discomfort. I can cycle for much longer than I can sit in a wheelchair or a mobility scooter.

"I just love the wonderful feeling of freedom that it gives me."

A standard wheelchair is far too uncomfortable for Eileen for any significant length of journey, but with her specially adapted electric bike she can independently enjoy much wider access.

However, there are some very frustrating limits to the scope of her mobility, as she soon found out when she tried to squeeze through restrictive access points onto the Chester Millennium Greenway, bump painfully up and down kerb thresholds on roads and pavements, and worse still being told that she is not allowed to access the platform areas at Chester Station because her mobility aid is a ‘bicycle’ not a wheelchair.

Motivated as always by her challenges, and with support from her friends in the Chester Cycling Campaign, Eileen has started to identify and map locations in and around Chester which represent the most significant limits to those using a wide variety of mobility aids and specially adapted bikes.

Working with Sustrans, the national cycling and walking charity, she has played a key role in launching their ‘Raise the Bar appeal’ to help remove or redesign restrictive barriers on Sustrans national routes, to create a more inclusive network.

This programme has highlighted several local priority areas for improvement and in particular has led to immediate success and ensured that the chicane gates at the Mickle Trafford end of the Chester Greenway have been modified to enable easy access for all adapted cycles, wheelchairs, buggies and mobility scooters.

Eileen’s success locally has recently gained her national recognition in a virtual social chat held in London by ‘Wheels for Wellbeing’ to review the opportunity to promote electric bikes as mobility aids.

Emma Budgen, session manager and development officer for Wheels for Wellbeing, said: "Eileen describes her bike as her mobility aid with such practical passion.

"She is a wonderful advocate for our flagship campaign ‘My Cycle, My Mobility Aid’, in which we are campaigning for legal recognition of a cycles as a mobility aid.

"Eileen’s input to the virtual meeting highlighted the practical issues involved in choosing an e-bike and importance of finding the one that best suits individual needs."

Eileen added: "One of the biggest drawback of e-bikes is the cost of buying, maintaining and insuring one, so not getting the most suitable option could be a very costly mistake!

"In spite of the current situation putting restrictions on our campaigning, with technological apps such as Zoom we can link up with other like-minded groups around the country, share best practices and swap ideas on how to move forward with a view to enabling the disabled community to get back out on their mobility aids."

Chester Cycling Campaign adds that it is important local authorities use the opportunity of reduced traffic to make amendments to roads and pavements and that access needs are not overlooked.

Consideration needs to be paid to path widths, restrictive barriers and bollards and the availability of charging units for those using e-bikes or mobility scooters.

The campaign also recommends a new permit scheme similar to the blue badge, to enable those using e-bikes as a mobility aid to legally access pedestrian zones.