“Not Everything Is A Home Run. Sometimes It’s A Single”

by Allan Appel

That was the take of Beverly Kidder, a member of the city’s Commission on Disabilities at their regularly scheduled monthly meeting that convened on Zoom Monday night.

She was speaking not about baseball, but reflecting on the general conclusion of her fellow commissioners on the result of the disability community’s efforts to influence the access issue for people with disabilities wanting to buy bus tickets at the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) new 72 Church St. sales outlet.

The issue was joined in January of this year when, following the DOT’s decision to close its long-time ticket and info kiosk on the Green, they rented a storefront a block or so away.

It was not so much the distance from the Church and Chapel corner where many of the buses continue to cluster — although the disability community saw that as a thoughtless choice. The issue was rather that the new storefront office that the DOT had chosen features a high step up and is located on a narrow sidewalk with a tree nearby doing further narrowing and posing all kinds of trip hazards

Click here for a story about how all of those choices amounted to current and future obstacles for wheelchair access or for putting in a ramp, and how criticism from the disabled community resulted in the DOT rethinking the storefront configuration and how it was to do business.

Initial concessions from the DOT included a bell, which when rung, would summon a DOT staffer to come out to the sidewalk and to help a person with disabilities inside. Non-disabled people would go inside to buy a ticket.

Yet the spear of the criticism, based on the regulations in the landmark 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), pointed to the obvious separate but unequal treatment for people with disabilities on display at the new location.

In recent weeks, the DOT has come up with their solution, the one that Kidder described as a base hit not a four-bagger.

The latest news from the DOT is that a “transaction window” is to be installed at the storefront. That means, basically, no one (apart, of course, from DOT staff who now have more comfortable digs and a bathroom) goes inside.

The plan is that all business appears to be conducted from the street level, where a new sidewalk (without ramping or significant widening) is currently going in. That meets the standard but it is far from what the disability community, especially its activists, had hoped and called for.

City Disability Services Director Gretchen Knauff, who convenes but does not vote as a commissioner, put it this way on Monday:

“The thing that should have happened here is that there should have been some consideration of ADA before they chose the location, before they opened the doors. We find a lot of times organizations build or renovate and they don’t take accessibility into consideration. ADA requires a state to provide access to people with disabilities. The law doesn’t dictate how you provide the equal access. So how they come up with a solution [is up to them]. That they are putting in a window where everyone is going to have access to ticketing is an equitable solution, but it’s not ideal.”

She quoted a message she received from disability activist David Agosta who recently had to buy a bus pass and went to 72 Church St. to do so and learned about the window, which has not yet been installed. “They’re trying not the right thing but the equitable thing,” she quoted him.

Below is a brief exchange among the commissioners that opens a window (pun intended!) on how the commissioners view the development and the extent and limits of the disability community’s effectiveness, and how it eyes the future:

Commission Chair Tricia Palluzzi: If it’s a sliding window, they’ll [that is, the DOT staff inside] have to reach down [to serve customers on the sidewalk below, or have to step down on the interior of the office to be on a level with customers].

Beverly Kidder: You have to think about accessibility for people who work there too!

Palluzzi: Someone there will sprain an ankle, and then something will happen. That’s always the way!

Knauff: Thing is they’re redoing the sidewalks all the way to the Green, but you can’t ramp it. So the window is the only thing, or they can move. But maybe they’ve locked themselves into a long lease.

Kidder: Maybe there could be a small electronic lift, like for vans.

Knauff: They may as well put in a ramp! There’s a tree there, and in New Haven you don’t just take out trees!

Palluzzi: There are just a lot of barriers, just a bad spot, so the most economical thing that works is to put in a window there.

Kidder: Our original issue was to go inside and buy tickets. Now it’s putting in a window.

Knauff: And it is not done yet, because we want to ensure the window meets standards. It needs to be 28 to 34 inches.

A reporter wanted to know — given how much ink and noise and work, especially their own — had been expended on this issue, if the effort had been commensurate with the result.

Commissioner Jamie Watson had this to say: In a city that’s growing and changing there won’t always be this rental agreement. Maybe as the Green and the transit plan are built out, things will be different ten years down. And part of the noise we’ve made hopefully will make a difference. The next time a move is planned, the voices of people with disabilities will be considered, and not as an after-thought. And that’s why the noise was worth it.