Last summer, on a sunny Sunday, I went to a baseball game at Chicago’s Wrigley Field. All in all, it was a fine day. The Cubs even won rather easily.
But the day was far from stress-free, because I had to figure out how to get to and from the stadium, located on the city’s North Side. Because I use a power wheelchair, trip planning can be quite a logistical undertaking when it involves public transportation.
I recently read a scary story about New York City that made me feel blessed that I made it to Wrigley Field and back home as easily as I did. It wasn’t the kind of frightful tale in which a giant gorilla rips a New York skyscraper out of the ground like a carrot. To me, it was actually scarier than that.
The report, titled “Out of Service: Creating an Equitable Transit System for New York City,” offers a hair-raising account of the passionate disregard by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which operates public transit in the city, for its responsibility to make the system fully accessible for disabled people. Issued by the office of New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, the report warned that “New York City’s transit system as it exists now has created a two-tier system, with its accessible options providing far worse service.”
For wheelchair users who plan to take public transportation here in Chicago, the first thing to think about is whether or not to use paratransit. In addition to making cities’ mainline transit systems accessible to those with disabilities, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) also requires public transit entities to provide an origin-to-destination alternative for eligible disabled people. This is commonly known as paratransit.
To arrange a paratransit ride in Chicago, users call the number for reservations in advance to schedule a pickup, drop-off, and a time and place for the return-trip pickup. Then a wheelchair-accessible vehicle is supposed to arrive at the prearranged time and take people where they want to go.
I’m eligible to use paratransit in Chicago, but I haven’t done it in thirty years and counting because, while it sounds peachy in theory, it really sucks in practice. Rides may not be available within a desired time slot, so riders often must settle for a time slot that’s available, regardless of whether it makes them early or late. And even then, the pickup vehicle might be late to pick people up. If the driver is on time, it might take way longer than anticipated to reach a destination. That’s because the driver likely will pick up or drop off several other passengers along the way.
Paratransit leaves little room for spontaneity. Everything must be arranged in advance, and you damn well better be ready to go at the prearranged return time, because paratransit drivers will only wait five minutes. If you’re not there, they’ll leave without you. So, if a baseball game goes into extra innings, tough luck for you.
New York City’s door-to-door equivalent of this is called Access-a-Ride, but “Out of Service” says riders call it “Stress-a-Ride” because of its perpetually “unreliable and inefficient service and long wait times.” The report adds that “customers also have to predict exactly when they need to leave for a destination, its address, how long they will spend at that destination, and at what time they should leave—which does not allow for last-minute plan changes that would typically pose no problem for a person using the subway or bus.”
The MTA considers a paratransit ride to be “on time” if it’s less than thirty minutes late. Plus, the report notes that paratransit in New York has “continued to deteriorate in recent years,” as “driver no-shows, customer complaints, and call center wait times are all increasing.”
That all sounds painfully familiar. I don’t think I’d take New York City paratransit to a ballgame or anywhere else for the same reason I didn’t take it to Wrigley Field last summer. I could’ve taken the Clark Street bus, which is a straight shot from the bus stop across the street from my home to one directly in front of Wrigley Field. All public buses in Chicago are wheelchair-accessible, as required by the ADA, but it takes about an hour to get to the stadium from where I live, especially on game days, when traffic is thick.
There’s nothing more frustrating than going the extra distance to get to a station that has an elevator only to find it’s not working.
The easiest way to get there from my home is the rapid-transit train on the Red Line. That’s also a straight shot, but takes only about thirty minutes. I board the train at the Harrison station, a block from my home in Chicago’s Printer’s Row neighborhood, and get off at the Addison station, directly behind Wrigley Field.
But it’s not as simple for me as it is for my neighbors who don’t use wheelchairs. The Harrison station isn’t wheelchair-accessible. It has no elevators, and only stairs lead to and from the station and the train platform. So I need to go three blocks north to the Jackson station, which has elevators. I can get off the train at Addison with everybody else because it has an elevator.
It sounds like my options would be even more limited in New York. “Out of Service” says only 141 of the 493 New York City subway stations have elevators—a measly 29 percent. The report also describes New York’s subway system as having “frequent elevator outages . . . . In addition, not all stations that have elevators are fully accessible. Some stations . . . are only accessible in one direction.” Conversely, in Chicago, 103 of 145 rail stations are accessible, about 70 percent.
But even if the stations I need to use in Chicago have elevators, I still can’t fully relax until I’ve used them and know that they’re actually working. There’s nothing more frustrating than going the extra distance to get to a station that has an elevator only to find it’s not working. In those instances, the elevators might as well not be there. I must either proceed to the next station that has an elevator (and hope it works) or turn around and go home.
On the day I went to Wrigley Field, I was somewhat preoccupied with public transportation anxiety—even during the game. Sure, I made it to the ballpark, but would I make it home? Would all of the rapid transit elevators that worked on my journey to the game still be functional when I returned home?
It doesn’t sound like the situation in New York will improve anytime soon. “At the current pace of installing new elevators,” the report says, “the MTA would not reach full accessibility until roughly the year 2100.” In a lawsuit settlement last year, the MTA agreed to make 95 percent of the system’s subway stations ADA-compliant by the year 2055.
The report points out that the ADA was signed into law in 1990, more than three decades ago. So why is inaccessibility so prevalent in the city’s public transit system? I believe there are two reasons: First, the ADA didn’t require cities to make all existing stations accessible. Certain locations had to be identified as “key stations” and retrofitted. That’s why the Harrison station, which is closest to my home, still isn’t accessible. The other reason is that some entities, like the MTA, have proven to be blatantly stubborn when it comes to doing more than the bare minimum in terms of accessibility requirements.
“The MTA recently spent hundreds of millions of dollars on aesthetic station improvements that do not increase accessibility, including new tiles on the walls, LED lighting and screens, and new benches,” the report notes. That money could’ve been spent to make ten stations accessible. “While subway stations need regular maintenance to remain safe and open, these cosmetic investments should not take priority over increasing accessibility.”
The Chicago Transit Authority has also spent millions of dollars to renovate old stations without making them accessible. The Damen station on the Blue Line, for example, received a $13 million renovation in 2014—yet no elevator was installed.
If I go to a ballgame this summer, I’ll try to concentrate on the bright side of things. If I start to feel distracted by public transportation anxiety, I’ll remind myself that, hey, at least I’m not in New York.