Disabled fear broken promises
FEWER SUBWAY STATIONS MAY BE MADE ACCESSIBLE
woes threaten the MTA’s plans to make the subway more accessible to people in wheelchairs or with other mobility problems — not to mention people with strollers and folks who just want to get their luggage to a train platform.
Planners are chopping 14 stations from NYC Transit chief Andy Byford’s plans to make at least 50 more stations accessible with elevators and other equipment, two sources told the Daily News.
The problem is that transit officials anticipate funding for Byford’s “Fast Forward” transit overhaul will shrink 25% over 10 years, to $30 billion from an estimated $40 billion.
“You’ve got to start cutting things, and, basically, there’s a lot of strains on the system,” one source familiar with the planning said. “It looks like (accessible) stations are being cut.”
The planners believe the MTA can afford upgrades at only 36 stations.
The funding fracas taking place behind closed doors at NYC Transit is exactly what accessibility advocates feared would happen.
“The real measure will be what the MTA does if it doesn’t get every penny of the $40 billion it says it needs,” said Joe Rappaport, executive director of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled, a plaintiff in a state suit against the MTA.
“What typically happens — and there’s no reason to believe it will be different this time — is that accessibility becomes an afterthought, or not thought of at all,” Rappaport said.
Inside MTA offices, Byford is trying to salvage his promise to make 50 more stations accessible by suggesting that more station rehab money be allocated to elevators and ramps that will bring them up to code under the Americans With Disabilities Act, the sources told The News.
And MTA officials have taken their concerns about station accessibility to Albany.
MTA Managing Director Veronique Hakim told state senators last week that the MTA now has about $1.4 billion to spend on station retrofits, and that the agency would like to double that commitment in its next multi-year capital plan.
Only 120 out of New York’s 472 subway stations — just one-quarter of the system — comply with ADA accessibility rules.
Fifteen station retrofits are under way, and 14 more are in the design and planning stations. When complete, those jobs will bring bring the number of accessible stations to 146, or 31% of the system.
Making 50 more stations accessible — as Byford wishes — would put 196 stations, or 41% of the system, in compliance with ADA rules.
Byford’s 50-station promise will be met, insisted MTA accessibility adviser Alex Elegudin.
“That’s what we’re fighting for,” he said in a statement. “We are committed to ensuring that no one is more than two stops away from an accesMoney
sible station — that has been our promise, and we will keep it.”
Theimportanceofmaking more stations easily accessible to everyone was underscored last month when 22year-old Malaysia Goodson, of Stamford, Conn., fell down a Midtown station staircase while holding her 1-year-old daughter, stroller and shopping bags.
Though Goodson likely died from a medical condition, the death exposed how few stations allow parents, the elderly and people who use wheelchairs to use the subway system comfortably.
Robert Acevedo, 53, who has spinocerebellar ataxia — a hereditary progressive illness that affects one’s gait and hand-eye coordination — told The News that the 50station push is insufficient.
Acevedo, who hasn’t worked since 2008 when he held a security job, has had mobility problems since he was40.Heisnowanactivist with the group Disabled in Action.
“I really think we should have all the stations with elevators,” Acevedo said.
He recalled a trek he made home to Chelsea from a political meeting that was held near the station on W. 116th St. and Lenox Ave. in Harlem, which is not wheelchair-accessible.
Acevedo had to drive his motorized wheelchair north 19 blocks in the 135th St. station at Lenox Ave., which has an elevator.
When the MTA opens up more stations, Acevedo said, “I’ll be able to go to other meetings — to do more advocacy.”
At least the nearly $3 billion the MTA has allocatturnaround ed to making stations accessible in the coming five-year capital spending plan is a from the paltry funding accessibility received in past capital budgets.
Just 1.8% of the money in the MTA’s 2005-09 capital plan for NYC Transit — $115 million — was allocated to making stations more accessible. Accessibility spending grew in NYC Transit’s 201014 plan, to 2.5% of all capital spending, to $278 million.
The current five-year NYC Transit capital plan, which runs out this year, allocates $1.4 billion to accessibility projects — 8.3% of its $16.1 billion total, according to the latest spending data.
“The MTA has more accessible stations than any other system in the country, but we have so much more to do,” MTA spokesman Maxadvocates well Young said.
However much money the MTA spends on the issue, want a legally binding settlement of a state lawsuit against the MTA that forces its leadership to a firm time line for a fully accessible system.
Sasha Blair-Goldensohn, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and an activist with Rise and Resist, said at a rally Thursday that it must become less costly to make stations accessible with elevators, ramps or other new entryways.
Blair-Goldensohn — citing Gov. Cuomo’s successful effort to scrap the L train shutdown with the help of academics from Cornell and Columbia universities — asked where Cuomo’s “braintrust” is on accessibility issues.
The lawsuit has shades of a September 1979 lawsuit filed by lawyer Jim Weisman on behalf of the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association that said the MTA discriminated against people with disabilities.
The case — which the MTA settled in 1984 at the urging of then-Gov. Mario Cuomo — led the MTA to agree to make 100 existing subway stations more accessible by 2020, make all new subway stations accessible, install lifts on city buses, and set up a paratransit system.
Weisman, who today is 67 years old, is president of the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans’ successor group, the United Spinal Association. He said Mario Cuomo’s son has a chance to reach another historic accord.
“I hope the governor sees this for what it is,” Weisman said. “It’s time to bring transit into the 21st century.”