The 59th Street - Columbus Circle subway station has four working elevators to take disabled travelers and others from street level to turnstiles and subway platforms. However, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has not informed the public that they exist.
An elevator at the corner of 58th Street and 8th Avenue in Manhattan takes passengers to the gate and booth level of the station. There is one elevator that takes passengers from there to the platform of the downtown A, B, C, D and 1 trains. Another two elevators take passengers from the booth level to the uptown platform for the same trains. One more elevator is still under construction.Edith Prentiss, an advocate for accessible transit and a member of the New York City Transit Riders Council – an independent advisory board to the MTA – explored the station last week to locate the elevators. “We’re path finding,” she said.
The MTA has not mentioned the Columbus Circle elevators in any 2009 press releases. The only press release in 2009 that focuses on that station is about an art installation. The MTA also does not list the station on its accessible station list.
Prentiss, who uses an electric wheelchair, was delighted by what she found but puzzled by the lack of publicity for the upgrades. Prentiss sits on multiple advisory and advocacy boards but said the MTA did not notify her that the elevators were finished.
“If they start a new bus line they put up signs about it. Why don’t they feel they need to inform us?” she said.
On her expedition, Prentiss entered the station using the street-level elevator maintained by Time Warner and then paused to look for signs but none were visible. A passenger pointed her to the next elevator.
Then Prentiss stopped a man in an orange “Contractor” vest who was working in the station to inquire about the elevators. He told her that fire alarms on some of the elevators are still being tested and that one of the new elevators will serve multiple levels, including street level. Prentiss eagerly introduced herself. She said she was thrilled that customers will have an additional option for exiting the station in case the current street elevator experiences an outage.
“Redundancy means you’re not going to be stuck. It means no more Fire Department having to carry us out,” she said.
Deirdre Parker, a spokesperson for the New York City Transit division of the MTA, confirmed that one elevator, number 280, is still under construction in the 59th Street station and that the others are in operation. She did not provide the date when they became operational or the number of completed elevators.
The MTA lists elevator outages here. However, a list of the 185 public elevators maintained by New York City Transit is an internal document that is unavailable to the public, Parker said. Some subway elevators are maintained by private parties and are also listed on the outage site.
Lacking an official subway elevator listing, Prentiss said she sometimes tracks elevator developments through parent blogs that discuss transportation with strollers. In June, the New York City Moms Blog posted an article about an elevator discovery in the Rockefeller Center station.
The Columbus Avenue station is one of 100 “key” stations scheduled to become accessible by the year 2020, according to a 2008 report by the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA. About two-thirds of those stations are listed as accessible. The MTA promised to upgrade the stations as a compromise with activists who sought full accessibility to the system’s 468 stations. Click here for more information.
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