North Side shelter objects to removal of nearby bus stop
Elderly clients use walkers, wheelchairs
Jay Poliziani sits in his third-floor office and shakes his head as he thinks about the dilemma hundreds of his shelter and food pantry clients at Northside Common Ministries will face later this month.
After reviewing the Brighton Road bus stop in front of the facility and receiving petitions from more than 100 neighborhood residents, Port Authority decided to proceed with plans to eliminate the shelter’s curb stop in favor of a safer one 386 feet away with a shelter and bench in front of the Zone 1 police station. Mr. Poliziani said he can’t understand how the agency could ignore the needs of his clients, many of them elderly or who use wheelchairs, walkers or portable oxygen.
Overall, the organization operates a men’s shelter for 28 to 30 residents every day, a food pantry three days a week that serves 850 families and a program to help people pay for utilities that draws 30 to 40 people every day. Many of them arrive by bus, he said.
“I don’t have a car so I use the bus all the time,” Mr. Poliziani said. “I see their struggles getting on and off the bus all the time. It seems like really poor planning and not really well thought out to make these people go to the other stop.”
Eliminating the ministries’ stop was part of Port Authority’s overall assessment of stops on the 16 Brighton route. After a preliminary recommendation to eliminate the stop, Port Authority’s Phillip St. Pierre, director of service planning and scheduling, and Darcy Cleaver, manager of passenger amenities and transit services, visited the site at Mr. Poliziani’s request.
During that visit, Mr. Poliziani said he showed the officials where an 80year-old woman would have to maneuver a cart with 60 pounds of groceries from the shelter’s food bank. He said he also stressed the poor, uneven sidewalk between the shelter and the police station.
But after reconsideration, the authority decided to go ahead with eliminating the stop on Nov. 24.
“We thought we had won, but we didn’t,” he said. “We’re extremely disappointed. It’s impossible if you’re using a wheelchair or walker to use the sidewalk [to get to the other stop].
“It’s just making the lives of those people more difficult.”
Port Authority spokesman Adam Brandolph said the authority is eliminating the stop because it isn’t safe and has poor access.
Since the agency can’t control street conditions, the safest move is to have passengers use the stop in front of the police station, Mr. Brandolph said. That stop already has higher use than the shelter site.
“That stop is inaccessible to riders using wheelchairs and walkers due to parking at the shelter,” Mr. Brandolph said. “A bus could not pull up to the curb to allow those riders to get on.
“Primarily, there is a shelter with seating, lights and a police station 386 feet away. You can read the lettering on the bus shelter from the stop we are removing. We’re always going to error on the side of safety.”
Mr. Poliziani said he agrees that the police station stop is better, but a high percentage of his clients need the closer stop. He offered to push the city to eliminate parking in front of the shelter and even pay for the paint to make a no parking zone, he said, but the authority wouldn’t wait.
Although his battle seems lost, Mr. Poliziani said he hopes the authority changes its approach to removing bus stops. This route was among the first in a six-year process to review more than 7,000 stops and eliminate those that are unsafe or redundant to improve the authority’s on-time rate.
“I think there really needs to be more thought into what needs to happen first before they decide to eliminate a stop,” he said. “No one came into our building to ask who we are and what we do before they made their decision.”