Community News
Access Denied
BY ANGELA MATUA
AMATUA@QNS.COM
Two subway stations in Astoria of-ficially
closed on Monday morning for
an eight-month overhaul, but some
believe the renovations are lacking a
major component: elevators.
The 30th Avenue and 36th Avenue
stations on the N/W line will be closed
until June for renovations that were an-nounced
by Governor Andrew Cuomo
last January. Upgrades will include
structural repairs; new and rehabilitated
station entrances; improved mezzanines
and platforms; and other amenities
like USB ports, digital screens and
countdown clocks.
In total, 30 stations across the city
will be overhauled and some over-hauls
have been completed such
as the Bay Ridge Avenue R station.
Brooklyn residents also complained
about the lack of accessibility at the
new station.
Councilmen Jimmy Van Bramer and
Costa Constantinides, along with state
Senator Michael Gianaris, held a press
conference in front of the 36th Ave
station last month to call on the MTA
to rethink their overhaul plans.
Gianaris, who has been a vocal
critic of the MTA, said Cuomo’s focus
on station enhancements instead
of addressing issues with subway
service is an example of “misplaced
priorities.”
“At a time when we face a crisis of
subway reliability and accessibility, the
MTA chooses to spend hundreds of
millions of precious dollars on cosmetic
improvements that will do nothing to
improve subway service or accessibility,”
he said in a statement. “Even worse, the
MTA recently diverted over $1 billion
dollars from signal fixes and new sub-way
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cars to pay for this initiative. While
it will be more pleasant for subway rid-ers
to stare at more beautiful stations
while they wait longer and longer for
delayed trains, the MTA’s inattention
to the larger problem is bordering on
scandalous.”
According to TransitCenter, a foun-dation
that advocates for urban mobil-ity,
only 23 percent of the subway’s
472 stations are accessible under the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
requirements. On average, there are
25 elevator outages throughout the
system per day.
By TransitCenter’s estimates, it will
take 70 years for the MTA to become
fully ADA accessible if it continues its
construction pace. Members from the
foundation were at the press confer-ence
and taped a flyer to the construc-tion
notice letting people know about
the lack of access.
“The Astoria stations that were closed
for eight months starting this morning
and are being renovated without add-ing
elevators are just the latest evi-dence
that the MTA has no strategy or
plan for achieving greater accessibility
throughout the subway system,” said
TransitCenter spokesperson Hayley
Richardson.
MTA officials pointed out that the
2015-19 Capital Program includes
$427 million to replace 42 elevators and
32 escalators and funding to make an
additional 19 stations accessible. Some
stations, they argued, are impossible to
make ADA-compliant without complete
reconstruction and track re-alignment.
“Increasing accessibility is a priority
for the MTA and elevators are being
added where possible, through the
“Key Stations” plan to make 100 major
stations accessible by 2020, as well as
additional non-Key stations being made
accessible in the next few years via the
MTA capital plan,” said MTA spokes-person
Shams Tarek. “In Astoria, new
elevators will be added to the Astoria
Boulevard station, and the MTA’s fully
accessible bus fleet provides strong
service across the neighborhood –
including connections to accessible
stations nearby.”
The Old Astoria Neighborhood Asso-ciation
said the MTA should immediately
introduce additional elements to the
upgrade like improvements to trains,
tracks, switches and ADA accessibility.
“At present, none of the stations
on the N/W subway line in Astoria
meets the Americans With Disabili-ties
Act (ADA) Standards for Acces-sible
Design,” the nonprofit wrote in
a statement. “Even with the planned
installation of elevators at the Astoria
Blvd station (the only station set to
receive elevators), people with mobility
issues will be forced to use alternative
methods to get there or to Queens or
Queensboro Plazas.”
Photo via Twitter/TransitCenter
