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MTA: Take Me Home from the Ballgame!

April 20, 2009




I am pictured here with two activists from the NYC Chapter of the MS Society and Councilmember John Liu protesting the inaccessible subway stop at Citi Field.

I may be the world’s biggest Mets fan, and on April 13, the night of the Mets home opener, I attended a protest, organized by the New York City chapter of the MS Society, outside of Citi Field at the Mets/Willets Point subway station to highlight the inaccessibility of that subway stop for Mets fans.

The subway station, which is on the Number 7 line, is only accessible to people with disabilities on one side. People traveling from the stadium to Manhattan who require accessible accommodations can’t access that platform because the accessible entrance is on the Queens-bound side. To get back to Manhattan, a wheelchair user needs to travel against the crowd, and take the 7 train in the wrong direction to the very last stop on the line. Once they arrive at the last stop, they are then supposed to transfer to a Manhattan bound train and go all the way back to in the other direction to continue on to Manhattan.

The entire process is an enormous inconvenience and totally unnecessary. The MTA could have easily installed a ramp on the Manhattan-bound side of the station. I hope that because of this protest, they will now rectify their error. The protest received some great coverage including a story by the Associated Press that was picked up by most sports news outlets, including CBS Sports (“Disabled fans protest poor accessibility near Citi Field”), and a local piece here on the Upper East Side in Our Town (“Subway Stop Not So Amazin’ for Kellner“).

The NYC Chapter of the MS Society’s press release about the protest has further information about the problems at Citi Field, “MS activists raise awareness about inaccessible MTA subway stations at Mets home opener.”

Last May, I introduced two bills to address accessibility issues in our mass transit system. The first would create the MTA Riders Council for People with Disabilities (A.10734-A/S.7817-Duane). The Council will have 14 appointed members who represent riders who use NYC Transit, the Long Island Rail Road and Metro North systems. The Council will have a non-voting seat on the MTA Board and make recommendations for improved services.

The second bill (A.10420/S.7348-Duane) requires daily inspections of elevators, escalators, bus lifts and other accessibility features in MTA facilities and establishes documentation requirements and oversight for their repair.

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Written by Micah · Filed Under Blogroll, Community 

Comments

One Response to “MTA: Take Me Home from the Ballgame!”

  1. Helen Chirivas on April 20th, 2009 10:54 am

    I salute you & your fellow protesters for bringing this problem to the public awareness. I hope the MTA rectifies the accessibility problem at the #7 line Citifield stop as soon as possible.

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