100 Key Station List

Metropolitan Transportation Authority

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is required to make 100 centrally located, or “key stations,” accessible by 2020. On March 15, 2010, the MTA’s Office of ADA Compliance said there are nine stations under construction to become accessible. Seven are scheduled for completion in the next two years with the installation of ADA elevators.

By the end of 2010, the MTA plans to complete the work at the 96th Street station on the 1, 2 and 3 lines and the Jay Street station on the A, C and F lines.

Next year, the MTA plans to finish upgrading the Kings Highway Station on the B and Q lines, the Bleecker Street station on the 6 line, the Broadway-Lafayette station on the B, D, F and V lines and the Mott Avenue station on the A line.

Work at the Bay Parkway station on the D and M lines is planned for completion in March 2012. The MTA also plans to achieve accessibility at the Cortlandt Street stop of the R and W trains and the East 180th Street station on the 2 and 5 lines.

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Couple Exchanges Vows in Central Park

Couple Exchanges Vows in Central Park

Disability rights activists Alejandra Ospina and Nick Dupree celebrated their love and commitment at Merchants’ Gate in  Central Park on Sunday.    Ospina is a representative for GimpGirl Community, an Internet organization that supports women and girls with disabilities, an English-Spanish translator and a health care reform advocate who has testified at New York City Council hearings. She has attended Hunter College.

Dupree, who is from Alabama, is a long-term health care reform advocate and writer who attended Spring Hill College. Dupree led a two-year campaign called Nick’s Crusade that enabled 25 people in Alabama who are ventilator-dependent to receive home care past the age of 21.  At the commitment  ceremony, the couple listened to love poems and live music, read original vows to each other and hosted a discussion on marriage equality to the friends and family members who joined them.

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Ospina and friends Nadina LaSpina, Elaine Kolb, Julie Maury and Jessica Delarosa spoke about their opposition to Medicaid rules that discourage couples who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) from marrying for fear that their health services will be taken away.

When two partners who receive SSI benefits get married, Medicaid reduces those benefits to 75 percent of the total that both individuals received prior to marrying. As a result, many couples with disabilities, like gay and lesbian couples, seek domestic partnerships or live together without formalizing their commitments.

Activist Danny Roberts, who was unable to attend the ceremony, sent a recording of his opposition to the policy.  On it, he told a story about meeting the woman he loves at the Empire State Building observatory at a protest.

“We allow ourselves to be demeaned into begging for what we need to live,” Roberts said about the receipt of Medicaid. “If we comply, we can’t marry the ones we love. It’s not illegal but it is essentially suicide.”    “I’m lesbian,” said Kolb between her acoustic guitar songs. “Now I can get married. It’s doubly frustrating. On the one hand, I can get married. On the other hand, I would still be punished.”

“It’s very scary because you become powerless,” Maury said about the experience that unwed couples face in dealing with health care emergencies.

LaSpina and Roberts, who helped organize the event, reserved the wheelchair-accessible space for the ceremony by calling it a “disability culture event.” The protest speeches did not overshadow the happiness of the day, where friends and family members shared personal stories and well wishes for Ospina and Dupree, sang along to Kolb’s original songs and cheered as loudly for social change as they did for love. 

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Transit Advocates Announce Lawsuit Against MTA

Transit Advocates Announce Lawsuit Against MTA

Transportation accessibility advocates have used public forums and rallies to protest t he Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) wide-ranging service cuts. Now they are taking legal action.

Activists stood outside Brooklyn Borough Hall August 17 to announce that they are suing the MTA and its New York City Transit (NYCT) division for cutting and restructuring 33 Brooklyn bus routes, including the elimination of the B39 and B51 routes.

The cuts took effect June 27 and include changes to subways and Access-A-Ride, which has implemented a reduced trip length for riders who are deemed able to walk from a subway or bus station to their destination.

The plaintiffs in the case are RueZalia Watkins (pictured), Anthony Trocchia and Clara Reiss – who are unable to use subways due to mobility impairments – as well as Disabled in Action of Metropolitan New York (DIA) and the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled.

“Everyone in New York has to have access – not access by appointment,” Watkins said, referring to Access-A-Ride, which requires advance reservations to use. “As long as we sit and stay in our homes and we don’t stand up, they will continue to make cuts,” she said about the protest.

The lawsuit charges that the service reductions violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and state law by denying people with disabilities the right to accessible transportation. The plaintiffs are seeking a permanent injunction requiring the MTA to immediately restore lost service to buses, subways and Access-A-Ride.

They are represented by South Brooklyn Legal Services (SBLS), the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG) and the law firm Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff and Abady.

Jane Stevens of NYLAG said she hopes the current lawsuit, like the one that activists filed against the MTA in the 1980s to establish the first accessible buses, will “awaken them to their obligation to provide accessible transportation.”

Pavita Krishnaswamy of SBLS said, “The service cuts…are impermissibly depriving mobility impaired New Yorkers of the opportunity to participate fully in the rich economic, educational, recreational and cultural activities available to the rest of New York.”

 Assemblymember Joan Millman, City Councilmember Letitia James and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz also attended the press conference, with Jean Ryan and Marvin Wasserman of Disabled in Action.

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