The other day, when RQS and I were in the city, I noticed a fellow totally lost due to no circumstance of his own control. I noticed that he was about to walk into traffic in the middle of the street, and no one was there to prevent that. If the man were sighted, this would not have been an issue as he would have been able to see potential oncoming traffic and act accordingly. But being blind, he had no idea of which direction he was heading, no sense of where the intersection was, and no way to get to his destination without help. Unlike many New Yorkers, I quickly got him out of oncoming traffic, and helped steer him in the right direction. (No, I was not going to walk him to his destination several blocks away - RQS and I were in the mood for Tipsy Scoop. But we did point him in the right direction and wished him the best.)
This almost incident got me thinking about how hard it must be for a handicapped person to get around NYC safely without assistance. For example, the subway system does not have any protection to insure that a person doesn't fall off a platform by accident (or by malicious intent). Many of the paths inside the subway system are totally confusing to a sighted person, and without sight, impossible to navigate. Even with sight, a wheelchair bound person can have major problems - especially if a single elevator in an "Accessable" subway station fails. That person may not be able to make it in or out of the subway, making it impossible to reach a destination.
Currently, the NYC Subway operates with an exception to the Americans with Disabilities act - they only have to retrofit stations for accessibility when the station is renovated. And I don't have a problem with that. The MTA couldn't afford the money, nor the headaches, of making every station ADA compliant. To really make the system accessible, more than one elevator or ramp for each platform or mezzanine would be installed for redundancy purposes, so that a failure with one would not prevent a handicapped person from using the station. But this only helps the sighted. What about the deaf and blind? To make things worse, there are some stations which can not be retrofitted, no matted what the cost. Some of the worst of these stations are in Lower Manhattan - the Wall Street station platform of the 7th Avenue line is too narrow for any renovation. What can be done there?
It's gotten so bad, that it starts to make sense to replace the existing underground network with elevated lines using modern designs. But I know that will not happen - at least not in my lifetime..
