By Carla Zanoni
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
INWOOD — When the MTA completes its $45 million rebuild of the Dyckman Street 1 train station nearly two years from now, the station will remain inaccessible to people with physical disabilities and mighty difficult for parents with strollers.
The renovated subway stop won't get elevators, an escalator or ramps to help people who can't get up or down stairs on to a subway train, assistant director for MTA NYC Transit Government and Community Relations Marcus Book said during a June 29 community presentation.
“There isn’t enough money to do that,” said Book.
According to the MTA, the station will not become accessible because it is not on the transit agency’s list of 100 “key stations” slated to become Americans with Disability Act (ADA) compliant by the year 2020.
“Dyckman Street station does not fit the criteria for a key station,” Deirdre Parker, a MTA spokeswoman, wrote in an email. She said the station is not a terminal point, is not a transfer point to other bus or subway lines, is not near any major activity centers and ranks 185th out of 422 stations in ridership.
But James Weisman, senior vice president and general counsel for the United Spinal Association, a disability rights advocacy group, said irrespective of its ability to be called a “key station,” the MTA has a legal obligation to make the station accessible.
Weisman said he believed that ADA regulations require the MTA to spend 20 percent of the cost of a renovation on accessibility, even for the non-key. “$9 million buys a lot of elevators," he said.
Transit analyst and journalist Michael Harris agreed and added that there is a particular need for accessibility in Northern Manhattan. The closest accessible transfer station to the A train for 1 train riders is at 42nd Street.
“It is an area that is really underserved by mass transit as it is,” he added. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense to deprive an entire community of the subway.”
