The grand opening of long-awaited ADA compliant elevators at Bedford Park Boulevard subway station took place on the Grand Concourse on Thursday, Oct. 15. MTA Construction & Development President, Janno Lieber, launched the opening alongside a group of MTA colleagues, and was also joined by elected officials, Congressman Adriano Espaillat and State Assemblyman José Rivera.

 

Speaking at the launch, Espaillat said, “There are three elevators, one up here [street level], and two downstairs [at subway level], and they were built at a cost of $38.2 million,” he said, adding that it was an extraordinary project.

 

He then said that the MTA was losing $200 million a week. “Our city’s subway system runs on a strap hanger formula,” he said. “The revenues that come in are dependent on how many folks use the system, and because of COVID-19, that has dropped dramatically. For that reason, I fought hard in Washington to allocate $4 billion in the Cares Act that gave the MTA some oxygen, and the ability to continue to move forward.”

 

He said a further $8 billion was invested in the Heroes Act about four months ago, and that that had been critical to the economy. “We saw the MTA come out and put out a recent report that shows how critical that funding is,” he said. “I’ve spoken to Nancy Pelosi. She understands the importance of that funding, and for that reason, she has included it in the Heroes Act, but now the money is actually higher – it’s $12 billion, so I’m going to have to fight for an additional $4 billion dollars to ensure that the MTA doesn’t get to that fiscal cliff that will lead it to a dark alley where they won’t be able to get out of it.”

 

He added that for far too long, the Bedford Park Blvd subway line had been neglected, and wheelchair users had issues to access public transportation. “Our city depends on public transportation,” he said, adding that during the pandemic, the vast majority of emergency workers relied on public transportation to get to work. “So, we must invest in them,” he said.

 

The elevator was quickly seen in use by elderly commuters shortly after its opening. The subway station serves the busy Grand Concourse corridor along the B and D lines.

 

In addition to the new elevators, MTA crews also refurbished the station and platform areas to make the station fully ADA compliant.

 

For his part, Lieber said the project would not have been possible without the support of Espaillat pushing for funding in Washington D.C. “We have one New York City member on the Transportation Committee for the jurisdiction, and he has to carry that load, and he fights for us every day and we bless him and we thank him for it,” Liebar said, later also acknowledging that the funding relief received bipartisan support. “We’re also partners in fighting for the Second Avenue subway, another huge project that needs to happen,” he said, referring to Espaillat.

 

Lieber also thanked Rivera, who he said fights for his community in Albany, before explaining how the MTA managed the project. “For the past couple of months, while COVID was causing our ridership to go down so dramatically, we’ve been working at an amazing pace, doing elevators among many other projects,” he said, adding that the MTA had opened six different elevator projects around the city in recent months.

 

“Accessibility has to be a priority for everybody, he said. “We need folks with disabilities to be able to look at the same map of the New York City subway system that everybody else uses. They don’t have the same map. We’re gonna make it that way.”

 

Referring to the economic impact of the pandemic on the MTA’s budget, he then said, “We had 70 stations planned in just five years to be made accessible. In addition to actually knocking the projects out faster, we’re attacking cost which has chronically bedeviled MTA projects.” Lieber said to address this, he made it a priority to emphasize more aggressive project management, reducing bureaucracy to make it more attractive for contractors to compete for the various MTA projects.

 

“But we can’t have a fully ADA compliant system, we can’t have a 2020-2024 [capital] program at $50 plus million if we don’t have the money from Washington,” he said. “The federal government has to act now to support the MTA, to survive the COVID crisis, the same way they support all kinds of natural disasters, hurricanes in Florida. This is the equivalent of a hurricane for New York, and Washington needs to step up.”

 

Liebar then added that New York State sends more money to the federal government than it gets back every year. “While the [U.S.] senate and the [Trump] administration are debating whether to do the right thing, we are knocking out projects with our contractors,” he said, before acknowledging and thanking the construction workers and management teams that stood behind him.

 

In response to a question about how much more work is involved to make the subway system completely accessible, he said, “We’re really only about 25 to 30 percent of the way. So, in the Bronx, numbers reflect that. They’re roughly comparable. So, you know, we got a ways to go, and there are a lot of Bronx stations that are in that [remaining] 70 station group we announced at the beginning of this year, but there are a lot of Bronx stations in that, that are scheduled but only if we can get the money from Washington.”

 

The following list includes details of the ongoing and future ADA compliant projects scheduled to take place in the coming months at various Bronx subway stations:

 

• Gun Hill Rd / Dyre (5) is scheduled to reach substantial completion next month (November 2020)
• ADA projects – 4 stations in the Bronx have been awarded a contract in the past year: Tremont Ave / Concourse (B, D), 170 St / Jerome (4), 149 St – Grand Concourse / Jerome (4), and 149 St – Grand Concourse / White Plains Rd (2, 5)
• ADA projects at two stations in the Bronx are forecast for the awarding of a contract by the end of 2020: Westchester Sq / Pelham (6) and East 149 St / Pelham (6)

 

These projects/contracts consist of either elevator installations or other enhancements to the stations to make them more accessible such as ramps, platform alignment or safety improvements to surfaces.

 

ADA compliant projects listed in the MTA 2020-2024 Capital Plan include the following Bronx stations:

 

• Wakefield-241 St
• Kingsbridge Rd
• 167 St
• Burnside Av
• 3 Av-138 St
• Van Cortlandt Park-242 St
• Tremont Av
• Parkchester
• E 149 St
• Brook Av
• Mosholu Pkwy

 

Responding to a question from the Norwood News in terms of how high accessibility ranked in the MTA’s list of priorities, Lieber said, “It’s very high. If you look at the capital plan that was enacted by the government at the beginning of this year, of all of the areas that MTA invests in, the accessibility had the highest jump from prior capital programs. So, all of a sudden, we went from investing at a certain level to a much, much, much, I think four or five times as much in this capital program.”

 

He added, “And that’s because we recognize that although we’ve made progress, we had 130 stations that were made accessible, it’s too long after the ADA was enacted not to have a more accessible system. We have 472 stations. We need to get closer to making them all accessible. We’re investing literally multiples of what used to be invested in accessibility in this capital program, and we’re gonna continue to prioritize it.”

 

Meanwhile, Rivera thanked the MTA, “a state agency”, and said it was important to make Bedford Park Blvd station accessible because the surrounding neighborhood had many people living in it who were wheelchair users.

 

He also thanked Gov. Andrew Cuomo for “providing the leadership during this very difficult time, in making us aware that we got to protect ourselves by wearing masks, by giving us sanitizer.”

 

He said together with the governor and his staff, they were able to distribute over 25,000 mass, to seniors and just about everybody. “Today, I wear my mask very proudly,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’m a democrat.”