Edith Prentiss makes her way through a crowded Chambers Street sidewalk in her wheelchair, fighting foot traffic so she can wait a half hour for a bus that will take her barely a mile through downtown Manhattan. While walking might seem to be the faster option, it isn't one available to Edith or the 90,000 other disabled New Yorkers who face a series of frustrating obstacles as they try to get to work using New York City's public transportation network. "And you wonder why unemployment is so common among the disabled?" Prentiss asks on the M5 bus that will take her, after an almost two-hour commute, to Battery Park.
When the MTA reopened the old South Ferry station last week, it allowed subway riders to once again access the West Side of Manhattan from the ferry terminal, and provided a stopgap transit option while the "new" South Ferry station undergoes a three year recovery after being inundated by the floodwaters from Hurricane Sandy. But service to South Ferry has not been restored to all New Yorkers.
Subway riders with disabilities are still facing a long, difficult commute to South Ferry from the now-southernmost 7th Avenue ADA-accessible station at Chambers Street (one of the advantages to the new South Ferry station, besides platform-length and brightness, was its accessibility for disabled commuters). One solution would be a shuttle bus to take riders from Chambers Street to South Ferry, but the MTA currently has no plans to do that.
At the moment, the MTA has posted instructions for disabled commuters to take the M5 or M20 bus from Chambers Street, but as Prentiss, vice president of legislative affairs for the advocacy group Disabled-In-Action demonstrated for us yesterday, this transfer is both time-consuming and difficult. While there are more ADA-Accessible stations than ever before (76 stations), disabled riders still find the system a challenge, and the loss of the new South Ferry station is just one more obstruction.
(Max Rivlin-Nadler / Gothamist)
Prentiss commutes from her home on 186th street in Washington Heights to the closest ADA-Accessible station at 177th, traversing almost a half-mile, and in the process taking two elevators and wheeling down a steep hill. "The MTA used to include on the service change sign the exact information for disabled riders," she tells us. "They used to include mobility-specific information, now they say to call 311, and you know how that always turns out. The MTA is pretty damn uncommunicative. The assumption is that everyone knows where the ADA stations are, but a lot of people don’t.”
Heading downtown on the A train before transferring to the 1 at 59th Street, Prentiss praised the new (but now mostly destroyed) South Ferry station for its accessibility, even the inclusion of rescue rooms for the disabled to go to during emergencies. Switching from the A train to the 1 train, she became stuck in the elevator for a several minutes (one of the recurring hazards for anyone taking an elevator in the transit system, but at least it wasn’t as long as this nightmare). Prentiss hit the emergency button and spoke with a station agent who reported the problem, and the doors eventually opened.
Stuck on elevator from Gothamist on Vimeo.
1 trains now run with signs informing riders that South Ferry service has been restored, along with information for mobility impaired customers to take the M5 or M20 to get downtown. From the Chambers Street subway exit, Prentiss wheeled to Broadway on thin, mostly-closed sidewalks that bordered construction sites, taking 15 minutes to get to the bus. She then waited another half hour (on a weekday) for the bus to arrive. “I could have wheeled myself there in the time it took to take the bus to South Ferry, but why should I have to do all these things when other people don’t?”
Prentiss would like to know why the MTA isn’t running a shuttle bus for disabled people between Chambers Street and South Ferry. “It’s a long hassle if you’re handicapped,” she said. “We’ve missed three ferries to Staten Island during the time it took us to go between Chambers and South Ferry alone.” Prentiss isn't alone in her consternation; one Staten Island man has vowed to file a Federal Transit Administration Civil Rights complaint against the MTA and DOT for failing to provide better options for disabled commuters.
(Max Rivlin-Nadler / Gothamist)
Hurricane Sandy presented the MTA with several unprecedented challenges, not the least of which was the destruction of their new ADA-accessible station at South Ferry. “We have been clear from the onset that the old South Ferry station is only a temporary solution until we can rebuild the new station that was completely destroyed by the storm," says MTA Spokesman Kevin Ortiz. "[Prentiss's] situation is exactly why we need to rebuild the new station."
While Prentiss is skeptical of the current time frame put forward by the MTA for the rehabilitation of the new South Ferry, Ortiz writes that the MTA is “in the process of working on project details and scope to rebuild the new station and the timeline of 2-3 years is the current estimate on how long it will take to complete that work.” The MTA believes that the two buses, the M5 and M20, will be enough service to accommodate disabled riders, and a shuttle option isn’t being explored.
(Max Rivlin-Nadler / Gothamist)
While the Bowling Green Station provides another option for getting close to the South Ferry, it still doesn’t provide an answer for disabled riders who could be without an accessible commute for over three years. Prentiss doesn’t understand why she has to listen to people telling disabled commuters to just put up with more transfers or even a longer out-of-system distance to cover: “If you need an accessible trip, it’s for a reason.”
(Max Rivlin-Nadler / Gothamist)
