All New Yorkers will feel the pain of bus and subway cuts this summer, but some handicapped riders say they are truly left stranded.
Buses are the only fully ADA-accessible form of mass transit in the city and, starting at the end of June, the MTA plans to eliminate or shorten dozens of routes.
Riders can turn to Access-A-Ride, except the paratransit service itself will be trimmed by about $80 million worth of service reductions, too. And forget the subways. Only 70 of 468 stations have elevators.
“They just didn’t think too much about us,” said Brooklyn resident Mildred Escobar. Escobar, 40, has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair; she needs the B39 bus to get to her job in Manhattan every day. But the B39 will be axed at the end of June. She can use an elevator at the Marcy Avenue J, M, Z stop but none of the lines’ stops in Manhattan have elevators.
“I’m going to ask my job to transfer me to our Brooklyn office,” she said.
“We can’t get into Manhattan,” said Anthony Trocchia, 40, who also uses the B39. “How can you not feel like a second-class citizen?”
