(Newsday posted the following article by Jennifer Maloney on its website on December 30.)
NEW YORK — A disabled riders advocacy group plans to issue a report slamming the MTA and the Long Island Rail Road for failing to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act and allowing dangerous platform gaps that have caused hundreds of injuries.
A draft of the report, obtained by Newsday and scheduled to be released Jan. 4, rejects the findings of a state investigation, which found the LIRR bore no responsibility for the August death of Natalie Smead.
Smead fell through a gap at the Woodside station and was struck by a train.
The report by the Disabled Riders Coalition also shows that two weeks before Smead’s death, the MTA, in a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation, objected to a proposed regulation that would set a 13-inch maximum for commuter railroad gaps on curved sections of track.
“The LIRR may believe that gaps of 15 inches are acceptable, but we do not,” the draft report says. “We conclude that gaps of such magnitude are not only in direct violation of the ADA, but are a threat to rider safety.”
MTA and LIRR officials declined to comment on the coalition’s findings Friday, saying they had not seen a copy of the report.
LIRR officials previously have said that the railroad complies with the ADA through the use of bridge plates – metal ramps extending from the train car to the platform that are deployed manually by railroad personnel on request.
The ADA, which mandates a maximum horizontal gap of 3 inches and a vertical gap of 5/8 inches, allows the use of bridge plates where those requirements are not “feasible.”
But the coalition’s report argues that the LIRR has never demonstrated the infeasibility of implementing the ADA guidelines at its stations.
U.S. Department of Transportation guidelines state that each station must be evaluated “on an independent, case-by-case basis.”
The Disabled Riders Coalition obtained a July 24, 2006, letter to the DOT from Fredericka Cuenca, an MTA special adviser on safety issues. Cuenca wrote that Metro-North and LIRR use bridge plates “due to an inability to meet the gap requirements at most stations.”
But LIRR officials have acknowledged that before Smead’s death they had never conducted a study of gaps throughout their system.
In the letter, Cuenca also acknowledged that gaps on Metro-North and the LIRR “occasionally exceed” 10 inches on straight track and 13 inches on curved track.
Referring to proposed changes in regulations on implementing the ADA guidelines, Cuenca objected to proposed maximum gaps of 10 inches on straight track and 13 inches for curved track.
The coalition’s report also criticized the state Public Transportation Safety Board’s investigation, saying that had the gap met ADA guidelines.
“Ms. Smead never would have fallen through the gap in the first place,” the report said.