This thesis explored whether an exclusive and family unfriendly environment resulted from biased design attitudes of built environment professionals (Section 1). Literature surveys observed that designers design for their own demographic group and that railway development privileged or disadvantaged different groups of people (Section 2). Surveys identified that bias when only 0.5% of Tube travellers had disabilities, whereas 17% of Londoners had disabilities (Section 2). Analyses from the literature review raised three research questions (Section 3) and the method chosen was a questionnaire survey (Section 4).

Three Main Research Questions

Q1: Who had favourable or inadequate experience at Tube stations? Q2: What, and who, caused favourable or inadequate experience at Tube stations? Q3: How can we overcome inadequate passenger experience?

The survey group chosen were clients or designers of Crossrail, London’s newest underground railway. Section 5 presented evidence and analyses; Section 6 discussed the results and Section 7 responded to those research questions. The thesis concluded in Section 8 by standing back to review the research project and make recommendations. This thesis made a contribution to knowledge by finding a way to measure those ‘soft’ issues, like gentleness, comfort, security, confidence, love and belonging, creativity and lack of prejudice. The survey found a lack of those positive experiences in most of the demographic groups surveyed. This thesis respected those qualities that need addressing by designers, clients and operators of the built environment, and Tube stations. It found that better dissemination of knowledge using well-defined briefs; continued professional development, professional ethics and professional built environment courses may make London’s built environment more family friendly and inclusive to ensure both a sustainable economy and a healthy and just society.