Sujin’s complaint

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Sujin* asked V/Line about opportunities to improve services for passengers with ASD and sensory processing issues. She felt she wasn’t being heard.

Sujin is a lived experience advocate for people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and sensory processing issues. She is a V/Line commuter who uses V/Line’s quiet carriages.

Sujin told us that getting a quiet journey in a V/Line quiet carriage was ‘hit or miss’. She said passengers often talk loudly or use audio devices without headphones. Conductors didn’t address these noisy behaviours, even when Sujin asked them too.

Sujin felt that V/Line’s quiet carriages had the potential to help V/Line offer a more accessible service for people with sensory processing issues. She contacted V/Line to ask about the intended purpose of quiet carriages and find out why quietness wasn’t enforced. She also asked V/Line if it had considered other ways to accommodate passengers with ASD and/or sensory processing issues.

In their response to Sujin, V/Line explained that quiet carriages are passenger-regulated, ie: passengers volunteer to speak softly and mute their devices. They said these ‘quiet courtesy behaviours’ were encouraged through on-board announcements.

V/Line also said that conductors don’t enforce these behaviours, which they explained is related to the fact that Victorian public transport operators cannot remove or ban passengers for behavioural issues or offences.

Why did Sujin complain to the PTO?

Sujin contacted us because she wasn’t satisfied with V/Line’s response.

Sujin noted that V/Line hadn’t answered her questions about the purpose of quiet carriages, or whether they had considered other accommodations. She also told us that she couldn’t recall ever hearing on-board announcements about quiet carriages.

How did the PTO handle Sujin’s complaint?

Our first step was to speak with Sujin, to make sure we understood the aims of her original enquiry to V/Line and the issues she wanted addressed. Through this conversation, we established that:

Sujin believed that public information about quiet carriages gave passengers unrealistic expectations about how quiet they would be. Sujin thought this may create issues for passengers with ASD, because some people with ASD can become agitated or distressed by disrupted expectations or ‘rule breaking’.
Sujin’s aim in asking about the purpose of quiet carriages was to understand if their purpose included support for people with disabilities. If this wasn’t their purpose, Sujin wanted to know whether V/Line had considered making it a focus.

Our next step was to work with Sujin to understand how she wanted V/Line to resolve her complaint, and to help her formulate resolution options for V/Line to respond to. These options included:

a meeting with V/Line’s Accessibility Manager to discuss her concerns and ideas.
for V/Line to confirm whether their frontline staff received disability support training that included the voices of people with lived experience.

What was the outcome?

V/Line agreed to:

arrange a conversation between Sujin and V/Line’s Accessibility Manager.
review their website, to ensure quiet carriage information was clear and passengers knew what to expect.
review the content and frequency of on-board announcements, to help promote awareness of quiet carriages and related courtesy behaviours.

V/Line advised Sujin that the purpose of quiet carriages is to give all passengers the option to travel in a quieter environment. They confirmed that all V/Line frontline staff had completed Hidden Disabilities Sunflower training, and that V/Line disability awareness training was co-facilitated by people with lived experience of disability.

* Names and other identifying details have been changed