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Despite a precarious financial situation at the dawn of the new year, the MTA has created a new management position: Chief Accessibility Officer, reporting directly to President Pat Foye. The new role will be filled by Quemuel Arroyo, the former accessibility manager at the New York Department of Transportation.
Former New York City Transit president Andy Byford created a similar position in 2018 with the first senior system-wide accessibility advisor and hired Alex Elegudin to report to him. Arroyo, who uses a wheelchair, will be responsible for accessibility across the MTA, including Metro-North, Long Island Railroad and Transit.
Arroyo’s job will require him to balance being an advocate for the accessibility community, which often asks for nothing less than full accessibility, and a representative of MTA leadership, with all of its financial limitations. and physical.
But unlike its predecessor, which backed Byford’s ambitious accessibility plan to ensure passengers will never be more than two tube stops from a station with working elevators, Arroyo said that the MTA had to think about alternatives, such as ramps.
“I don’t think that saying that every station doesn’t require an elevator is controversial at all,” Arroyo told Gothamist. “Elevators break, that’s just the reality, and I know ramps never break.”
Currently, around 29% of the MTA’s 472 metro stations are accessible, or 135 stations (although nine of them are only partially accessible). The MTA had hoped to create 70 newly accessible stations by 2024, before losses from the pandemic forced the agency to suspend its capital plan.
The MTA has looked into ramps in the past, but in Manhattan there is often not enough space anyway.
Supporters are not against Arroyo’s plan, but say they will continue to push for a metro system that is fully accessible to everyone. “This is a civil rights issue and I think people with disabilities deserve to have the same access to the metro as people without disabilities,” said Jessica Murray, Chair of the Transportation Accessibility Advisory Committee. in common with New York City Transit and organizer with the group Rise and Resist Elevator Action Group.
It is also a legal problem.
“The MTA is fighting our lawsuits as if it had never heard of the American With Disabilities Act. And like they’ve never heard of New York City’s human rights law, ”said Joe Rappaport, executive director of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled (BCID) and plaintiff in three lawsuits against the MTA for its lack of accessibility.
“They haven’t made any real effort to settle the lawsuits, at all, and they’re trying to drag this out forever, as far as anyone can tell,” he added. Rappaport said he hoped the appointment of “Q”, the nickname friends and colleagues use for Quemuel Arroyo, is a sign the MTA might take another approach. “But until now, when there were other advisers accessible to New York City Transit, that just hasn’t happened,” Rappaport said.
The MTA has been sued for failing to install elevators during repairs or upgrades to a station. The agency has often said that this is too expensive and not feasible given the age of the stations and the complexity of the ownership of the street space.
Arroyo confirmed to Gothamist that he would weigh in on the pending lawsuits, but would not specifically comment on the cases or how he would advise MTA lawyers.
The ongoing question of how to reduce the cost of the Access-A-Ride program will also fall on Arroyo to navigate. Before the pandemic, the MTA had planned to cut back on the popular electronic hail program. Now, the future of the program remains in the air. Arroyo says he doesn’t use Access-A-Ride frequently, but prefers to take the metro.
The MTA currently has around 20 projects to add elevators in the planning or construction phase.
Arroyo, who previously worked at DOT for six years and also worked on new accessibility projects at Jay Street Station, said he wanted to use the technology to help cyclists. For example, finding a way to use Bluetooth technology to notify users with hearing problems about service changes at the same time as other users.
“New Yorkers with disabilities won a huge battle today by having their voices heard, their experiences represented at the table at the highest level of the MTA,” said Arroyo.
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