A woman who fell and injured herself at Newport Station late last year claims its platform ramps are too steep and don’t comply with disability access standards despite the state government announcing upgrades nearly three years ago.
Andelka Obradovic was walking down the ramp from platform two on Monday 15 December when she tripped and fell to the ground.
Ms Obradovic suffered grazes to her hands and knees in the fall and said she still cannot kneel without pain.
“I feel very fortunate that I didn’t break anything or hit my head,” she said of the fall which she blames on the steep gradient of the ramp.
“I don’t normally fall when I trip. I believe it was the steepness of the ramp that prevented me from being able to recover from the trip.”
An occupation therapist, Ms Obradovic said she’d long suspected the Newport Station ramps were not compliant with disability access standards.
After recently measuring them herself, she said she’d been proven correct.
“Public ramp gradients should be 1:14 (a 4 degree angle) to meet disability access standards, but based on my rudimentary measurements, the six ramps at Newport Station are approximately 1.7 to 2.5 times that gradient,” Ms Obradovic said, adding that other compliance measures were lacking too.
“They lack landings which should be at 9m intervals and there are gutters, instead of kerbing, on both sides of the ramps into which four-wheel walker and wheelchair wheels could get stuck.”
Ms Obradovic wants to know why this is still the case when in 2022 the state government used Newport Station to announce a $57 million package for accessibility upgrades at train stations across Melbourne’s west.
“This is another step towards a more accessible train network for residents in the western suburbs,” Williamstown MP Melissa Horne said in announcing the upgrade package alongside then Transport Minister Ben Carroll on 29 August 2022.
Asked about what accessibility improvements had been made at the station since, a spokesperson for the state government didn’t mention ramps.
“In 2024, there was resurfacing work undertaken on platform two at Newport train station, to reduce the gap between the platform and train,” the spokesperson said.
