All Riders
Special | 11m 39s | Video has closed captioning.
The subway makes New York City tick, but getting around is a constant battle for disabled New Yorkers.
Aired: 02/13/23
Expires: 02/12/27
♪♪ [ Train rumbling ] ♪♪ -My mom calls me the "luckiest unlucky guy", which I think is about as succinctly as you can put it.
On July 29, 2009, when I was doing my usual walk to work; get a little exercise, get some air, and just think about the day ahead.
A giant rotten limb fell from a tree as I walked beneath it in Central Park, and clobbered me.
What they found was it probably hit me more or less on the head.
And the reason I'm still here is amazing good luck after that moment.
It's hard to think of it as good luck, but there was a doctor, Rajiv Narula, who was jogging by.
He said, "You've obviously had an arterial bleed because the blood was coming out dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun.
And that's kind of it.
If you -- If nobody finds you, you bleed out.
That's sort of it.
So what does it mean to get around when you can't walk?
-Thank God there's no urine!
It smells not so bad over here.
As elevators go, it's pretty good.
Pretty good, this one.
Thanks.
You have to be very patient, very patient when you do this.
It's not good.
It's not good.
-Hello?
-This is one of the big stations in the city!
34th Street, Herald Square!
Jail!
This is jail!
This is jail!
Jail!
[ Chuckles ] -You can probably get in.
-Go ahead.
So, my cousin Rosie, intrepid young reporter.
"So, you were telling me about those elevators in the subway not working, so I got my guy I work with to put in a FOIL, Freedom of Information Law request to the MTA.
They sent him back a year's worth of the elevator outages from 2014 to 15, one year."
I looked at it and said, "Oh [bleep] this is bad."
Because there were 9,000 outages.
9,000 elevator breakdowns over the course of a year.
And, like, that's a number that is hard to comprehend.
Right?
So I started crunching the numbers.
I had them in a big spreadsheet.
And I said, "What is that?
9,000?"
Over the course of a year, 365 days in a year.
That's 25 per day.
Wait, there's like more or less 100 stations that are even accessible in the first place.
So if 25 go out a day, that means like a quarter of the stations, at some point during the day, had an elevator that wasn't working.
What?
What?
It's not, like, understood that when an elevator is out at a station, that station is off limits, it is closed for anyone in a wheelchair.
But who else?
It's parents with little kids.
Pregnant women.
Old people, but also young people.
And any people who break their ankle and have a cane.
It's delivery workers pushing a case of soda on a hand truck.
It's our economy.
-I think the entire management of MTA has been pretty bad historically.
They've always treated The Bronx, and even more particular, areas near the South Bronx as almost secondary customers for the MTA.
-How you doing?
-The MTA doesn't really care.
We tend to get the bottom of the barrel.
-All right, so here we are at the Parkchester train station.
We're in front of the station right here.
If you can see that in front of the station, all this space here should have been utilized when they did the reconstruction a couple of years ago.
This is the area where the elevator should be.
There's a plaque here.
"MTA New York City Transit Authority.
Parkchester Station.
Rehabilitated in 2012."
I don't know what that means.
Rehabilitated doesn't mean ADA compliance.
-What they do is they try to engage in legal jargon to figure out how they can avoid to comply with certain federal laws or state laws.
They're very adept at it, they've been doing it for years.
We know that it's mismanagement!
However, we haven't been able to establish it, per se, because they guard their books like if it was a state secret.
-Hey, hey, MTA!
We're not going to go away!
Hey, hey, MTA!
We're not going to go away.
-Governor Cuomo or Governor Cardboard, was nice enough to join us today.
And it's his show.
But it's not really so funny because Malaysia Goodson fell down the stairs and died with her stroller.
It's just not right.
-What do we want?
-Elevators!
-When do we want them?
-Now!
-What do we want?
-Elevators!
-When do we want them?
-Now!
-Malaysia was an excellent mother.
She was always an ear for everybody to talk to.
-She was definitely more mature than all of us.
-I was home when I heard the news that Malaysia died.
My whole world was upside down.
Everything just stopped.
The pain that I'm going through now is a pain I didn't even think exists.
Just imagining... ...as she was going down, what was going through her mind.
It's really a lot to take in.
This is where my baby took her last breath in.
-I feel so funny just being here.
-Look at this.
Look.
Look at this.
-They need an elevator her for the same reason.
-It's going to be 10 months to the day on Thanksgiving, Malaysia's been gone.
Last year, I would have never imagined that my baby wouldn't be here with us this Thanksgiving.
Her birthday is coming up.
[ Sobs ] Oh, God.
-It's terrible and sad, but... ...people die in accidents every day, but this is one that didn't have to happen like that.
-Leadership matters.
New York City Transit now has a new focus on accessibility thanks to hiring people like Alex Elegudin.
-My name is Alex Elegudin.
I'm the Senior Advisor for System Wide Accessibility here at MTA New York City Transit.
I oversee accessibility for subways, buses, and our paratransit division on behalf of the president.
I mean, having somebody with a disability working with those who are the decision-makers is the most collaborative and beneficial way to get change made.
Here.
I'm empowering you.
Lead us on the push toward full accessibility.
I think that's how you get it done.
There are so many different disabilities.
Those disabilities interact with our transit system in so many different ways.
So by playing this role internally, I feel like I'm building the bridge, right?
I'd like to believe I represent the bridge from the community and the advocates to the executive and leadership here at New York City Transit.
We feel incredibly fortunate, a historic investment into 70 ADA stations.
This is a tripling of the pace that we have usually done in 5-year terms.
It really puts into perspective and hope that full accessibility may one day be a possibility.
-"MTA riding first class."
How come I don't feel like first class?
-It's a plan.
It's another plan.
And the track record is not good.
I'll hold my applause for now.
-You know, the only thing I can say is just give us a chance to deliver.
But just saying that it's all talk I think is -- it's just them being just critics.
And just, you know...
...I would say maybe even going to a level where they're not supporting the cause itself by not letting us get on with our work.
[ Crowd chanting ] -Government doesn't want to be held accountable and doesn't want to be pushed.
They want to be left alone to let them do their own thing when they're getting it done.
-Yes.
Oh, yes.
Yes.
Yes.
-Accountability, efficiency, and transparency are not adjectives that anyone would use to describe the MTA.
-There is always a lot of factors.
People want to say, "Look, it should just be accessible.
It's cut and dry, make it accessible."
But it's never that simple.
-...not disposable!
-Disabled not disposable!
-Disabled not disposable!
-Somebody has to get killed so we can do something?
We're on a collision course.
-Recognizing that accessibility and inclusion is in all of our best interests takes vision.
-People with disabilities have a right to have the accessible New York that able-bodied people have.
And they just don't.
-When you're talking about securing people's rights, many times, the last line of defense are the courts.
-We need something like a legal binding agreement.
-What do we want?
-Elevators!
-And when do we want them?
-Now!
♪♪
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