Washington’s infrastructure deal is a raw deal for the disabled
(This piece originally appeared in the New York Daily News)
Right now, the United States Senate is debating the bipartisan infrastructure bill, but for disabled Americans, there is already a stinging defeat — one which will have long-lasting and potentially devastating consequences.
Here in New York City, barely a quarter of 493 subway stations provide disabled people with access to the city’s rapid transit system. That means nearly three-fourths of the city’s stations are not accessible to an estimated 500,000 New Yorkers with disabilities. As a member of the Rise and Resist Elevator Action group, I have been advocating for greater urgency in addressing the shameful inaccessibility of the subway for years. Former New York City Transit President Andy Byford brought attention and support to the idea that the agency should invest in accessibility and offered a short-term plan to achieve minimum station coverage in the 2020–24 capital plan, putting riders no more than two stops away from an accessible station. This comes at a cost of more than $5 billion, and it is still inadequate. After the next 70 stations are made accessible, 285 stations will remain inaccessible to passengers with disabilities.
This is unacceptable and shameful.
Advocates here have been fighting for decades, through protests and the courts, to get access to the nation’s largest public transportation system, the one that drives the state’s economy and makes the city work. The missing piece has always been funding. More than half of New York City residents don’t own a car, but people with disabilities often feel it is their only choice if they want to be productive, working, tax-paying members of society. In New York City, finding a way to afford a place to live often means living in accessible transit deserts, created by the same flawed planning processes that have historically favored investment in wealthier parts of the city.
This is why we need Washington to step in and use this once-in-a-generation moment to fully fund transit not only here in New York but across the country.
Unfortunately, Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, a key Republican negotiating the legislation, has rejected calls for greater investment in public transit in the infrastructure bill. Toomey also led the charge to kill Duckworth’s amendment, which would have finally created a path to allocate substantial federal dollars for the “unfunded mandate” of the ADA.
Investing in neighborhoods that lack a single accessible subway station is, according to Toomey, a “woke planning mandate.” Let me assure the senator, there is nothing “woke” about our community simply wanting equal access to public transit. There is nothing “woke” about us wanting to be able to get to work, to school and into our city. In addition to being deeply offensive, ill-informed and hateful, Toomey’s comments ignore the realities of how planning practices impact marginalized communities’ physical and economic mobility.
The hyperbole and complete disregard for disabled public transit riders is an unfortunate and total reversal from the GOP of the 1990s. Senator and disabled veteran Bob Dole championed the ADA, bipartisan legislation that was signed by President George H.W. Bush with great fanfare. Toomey and his colleagues are willing to keep what Bush called a “shameful wall of exclusion” erected in the name of a culture war aimed at keeping the nation and its public transit systems stuck in the past. And because of it, for disabled Americans, the Senate’s infrastructure debate is off to a disastrous start.
Congress still has time to fix this injustice and ensure all Americans have equal access to public transit. We demand they do.
Murray is a member of the Rise and Resist Elevator Action Group and recently earned her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from The Graduate Center, CUNY.
“Washington’s infrastructure deal is a raw deal for the disabled” was originally published by the New York Daily News on August 5, 2021.
Listen in to my conversation on The Thought Project podcast about my activism and research about disabled persons’ diminished access to mass transit in New York City.
