Earlier in the same commute day, I had to walk something like 1,000 feet out of my way, or climb something like 120 stairs, to get out of a different subway system, because one of the two escalators at that exit was out of service, and the managers chose to run the one that still functioned, to go DOWN. Down, not up. Down.

This kind of crap has got to stop. And the only way it is ever going to stop is if the individuals responsible are punished, personally and severely.
+
The two subway systems I have to deal with 4 or more times a week are the PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson system) between New Jersey and New York, and the New York City subway system of the MTA (New York State's Metropolitan Transportation Authority).
+
The PATH is run by a bistate governmental agency. Like so many other (quasi-)governmental agencies and "authorities", the Port Authority is scarcely answerable to anyone, locally. But it's got to answer to the Feds.

The MTA is also a governmental entity, tho created solely by the State of New York. It is independent of direct control by the state government, but it too must answer to the Feds.
+
The ADA is the "Americans with Disabilities Act" instigated by and passed under the first President Bush in 1990. It requires public transportation systems to be accessible (readily usable) by people with disabilities, meaning people who are wheelchair-bound or otherwise cannot readily negotiate stairs.
+
Because many public transportation systems were built before the ADA was passed, those old systems were "grandfathered", meaning they did not have to comply with every aspect of the law. But "grandfathering" should go on only so long. When a transit system is large, ridden by a great many people, enormously important to the economy of an area, and richly funded by a public authority, "grandfathering" should eventually run out and all such systems be required to make every part of their physical infrastructure and operating practices compatible with the ADA. That has not been done with either the PATH or the MTA. It's time it was.
+
If you take the PATH between Newark or Harrison in New Jersey and 33rd Street in Midtown Manhattan, you need to change trains in Jersey City. Ordinarily, during daytime hours, you need merely cross the same physical platform to catch the connecting train, which is either waiting there when your train pulls up or arrives within a couple of minutes. Not at nite. Late at nite, incomprehensibly, the managers of the PATH force passengers for Harrison and Newark to get off at Track 1, then go up perhaps 18 stairs, across an intervening area, and down another 18 or so stairs to board at Track 4, rather than Track 2, right across the way, without stairs intervening. At present, one of the two escalators that usually run to the mezzanine level between the two platforms is not working, being under reconstruction. If you don't know that and get off at the wrong point in the platform, you are in for an unpleasant surprise: a flimsy wooden wall barring entry to the escalator, with this sign toward the top.

It refers to "ARROWS TO ACTIVE ESCALATOR". You look for arrows. Not on that sign. Not on the adjoining signs.

Not anywhere on the entire enclosure blocking access to that escalator. So where is the dratted alternate escalator?
+
You see an elevator, so decide to get on that. It goes up, but only to an exit. The sign by it says it goes to an exit but does not say "exit ONLY", which it surely should if that is the case, because otherwise people might get on it expecting to be able EITHER to exit or to move around on the mezzanine level and choose between the two platorms at that station. So you have to turn around and go back down in the elevator and then look for stairs or the alternate escalator. This takes so much time that you miss the train. I did that last week and had to wait 22 minutes. I was livid, and used my cameraphone to take the pix above to document the utter absence of arrows directing people to the alternate escalator.
+
Tonite, I got out far from the working escalator so had to use the stairs, despite my problem with stairs. I rushed, to the extent I can rush at all, up the stairs, over to Track 4, and down another set of stairs, and just barely made the "connecting" train. Had I been a little slower — that is, a little more disabled — I would have missed the train. Surely this is a violation of the ADA.
+
But the managers of the PATH don't care about that. They design their service around people who can run for a train if need be. That is not what the ADA requires transit systems to do.
+
There is no way on Earth to justify shifting late-nite "connections" from across the platform to up some stairs, over a bit, then down more stairs — or you miss your train, when trains are not every 7 minutes, as in mid-day, but once a half hour. There is no good reason that connecting trains late at nite cannot or should not run on the track that stands across the platform the first train arrives on, as they do most of the day.
+
But the managers of the PATH don't give a damn about people who can't move quickly and have trouble with stairs. That's why the ADA had to be passed in the first place. And that's why we have to pass more and more laws every year: because people don't use the sense they were born with and won't do the right thing unless forced to.
+
What of that MTA decision to run the one functioning escalator DOWN in the evening rush hour? Did it not occur to them that it is easier for people to go DOWN stairs than UP? Are the people who run the MTA mental defectives? If the managers of the MTA are mental defectives, they should be given other jobs, under the ADA if need be, than jobs that require intelligence. Let them sweep up, for a tenth their present salary. But if they are entrusted to make intelligent decisions, they must have some sort of native intelligence, not be utter morons. And if they do indeed know that climbing stairs is far more difficult than descending stairs, yet nonetheless deliberately run a single escalator DOWN rather than UP, they should be flogged. Just grab them, rip their shirts off, tie them to a post, and flog them a minimum of one lash for every step they make disabled people climb. I could say, "one lash for every step that each and every disabled person has to climb" because of their outrageous decision, but that would be a death sentence, since 120 stairs (lashes) times 100 disabled people given hardship would be 12,000 lashes, fatal to anyone. I'm taking it easy on the bastards.
+
The New York metropolitan area is filled with old systems that feel themselves entirely exempt from both the legal and the moral requirements of the ADA. New York's Penn Station has elevators (if any at all) that go only to the mezzanine level, not the lobby level. Some tracks to this day seem not to have even that, but have no elevator at all, unless it is hundreds of feet from where most people get off their train. And what if you arrive in Penn Station in a wheelchair or shortly after knee surgery or having broken a leg and being in a heavy, full leg-length cast? You just have to climb stairs, buddy, that's all. What do you think you are, special? You'll climb stairs like everybody else or you won't come into New York City. We're special. You want to be here, you climb stairs. You don't like that? Stay the hell out of New York City!
+
Ah, but, last I knew, New York City was part of the United States of America, and, thus, subject to the Americans with Disabilities Act. But the ADA has grandfathered almost every part of the New York City public transit system.
+
The MTA and PATH don't have to accommodate cripples, so won't. Not as a matter of law. Not as a matter of common sense, or human decency, or anything else. They will make you climb stairs whether you can or cannot. And if you can climb stairs but only slowly, they will make you miss your train. Because they can. Did the ADA really intend to put any transit system permanently above the law? If so, it's time to write its successor, the Real ADA.
+
It's time to end all "grandfathering" under the ADA and compel adherence by every major transportation system in the Nation.
+
Even without a "new, improved" ADA, we who don't move quickly do have some recourse. We can file a complaint with the people who are supposed to enforce the ADA. This website will give you information on how to do that: http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/adahom1.htm.
+
(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,502.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 8:01 AM