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Disability in the News Archive

The Road to Equal Access Runs Uphill

Sunday, July 19, 1998; Page C08 -- John Travolta passed us in the hall, or that's what I'm told; I was too busy pushing a wheelchair to notice. I did glimpse a gaggle of congressional aides looking wide-eyed down the hall at the space where Travolta apparently had been.

But I wasn't on Capitol Hill to see movie stars. Seven of us, all members of the Maryland chapter of ADAPT, a disability rights group, had come to town to deliver "birthday" cakes to Newt Gingrich and Richard Gephardt, the co-sponsors of the Medicaid Community Services Attendant Act. That bill, which celebrates its first anniversary this summer, makes it possible for disabled people who qualify to use their Medicaid coverage to hire personal attendants to help them at home.

Our sole purpose was to deliver the cakes to two offices a block apart, but that mission took us more than six hours. It's not that wheelchairs are slow. The lead chair, a stripped down racer carrying our organizer, made good time.

Three people in our delegation also had motorized chairs or scooters, which can roll as fast as a New Yorker can walk. The problem was all the bypasses and detours we had to take and the second-class nature of so many so-called accessible routes.

While I don't use a wheelchair, I have a disability that causes fatigue so extreme that at times I'm too tired to eat or even talk. I didn't feel exactly chipper on the day we went to the Hill, but I'm glad I went. I saw a Washington that I hadn't seen before -- a world of "can't go there," and "we'll have to go around the block," of waiting for an elevator five times to pick up five wheelchairs, of jagged, bumpy pavement and cracked and patched brick, cobblestones and concrete.

The good news is that at least we were able to reach the congressional offices. At few years ago, before curb cuts were put in, that wouldn't have been possible. The bad news is these curb cuts are steeper than they look. Around the congressional buildings, the pavement was often cracked or unevenly settled too so that the front wheels of the wheelchairs would get stuck. Barney, the man whose chair I was pushing, would have to back up, do an about face and wheel backward up the cut with me lending a hand by pulling.

Once we got to the Longworth Building, we couldn't spot the wheelchair-accessible entrances. Going the wrong way would mean pushing Barney's heavy chair uphill. But our leader had been on ADAPT "actions" in Washington before and, after consulting a map, headed us in the right direction.

Once inside Longworth, we had to wait for the world's slowest elevators and then make several trips because most of the elevators weren't large enough to take more than one chair at a time. One member of our party who has limited use of his hands discovered that he couldn't reach the elevator buttons, which were marked with the correct international symbols and included Braille but were at shoulder height.

When we all made it to the second floor of the Longworth Building to make our first stop at Richard Gephardt's office, a couple of people wheeled off toward the restrooms. They couldn't find any that were wheelchair-accessible. One woman asked around until someone finally sent her to a nurses' station, which had a restroom she could use. Obviously, we need to elect wheelchair users to Congress.

We delivered the first cake and the big card, sang a resounding version of "Happy Birthday" to Gephardt's staff, took pictures and headed for the Rayburn House Office Building. Our leader suggested that we take the tunnels to save time and stay out of the heat, so we took various slow elevators to the basement. We found out we needed the sub-basement, so we waited for five more elevators. The first tunnel took us to stairs.

We retraced our wheels ruts and found a "people mover," a little open car train. But it wasn't possible to get a wheelchair aboard, not even by backing in seat-first, not even without the chair (which folded, so we had our hopes for a minute there). We took the walkway along the side of the rails, which descended a bit and rose again meaning more heavy pushing. We got to the Rayburn Building, but we still had to get to Newt Gingrich's office, meaning more elevators. It was close to 3 p.m. when we made it to the speaker's office. Everyone was friendly and helpful, and we did our celebrating, left the cake and headed back to Union Station for the MARC train to Baltimore. We traveled through more tunnels; some of us even got to ride a congressional "Members Only" elevator that has a real, live attendant. At about 4 p.m. our group surfaced into the "Code Red" air at Delaware Avenue, where we could see straight down its beautiful tree-lined vista to Union Station.

Eager to get home, we merrily risked some curbs cuts head on. No one got lost, hit by a car or left behind. Then, when we were a block from the train station, we came upon an urban amenity -- a plaza with steps and a fountain in the grand, monumental scale befitting a national capital, but without a ramp, pass-through or short cut.

Our fearless leader rolled into traffic to scout out the path of least resistance, then like Moses led us to the Promised Land -- the cool, dark interior and level, smooth floors of Union Station and thoughts of (more elevators) and home.

For me, the highlight of the day wasn't almost seeing John Travolta but the relief I felt when -- once upon a time during our long day's journey -- we happened upon a freight elevator that took all five wheelchairs at once. That was a cause for celebration.

-- Patricia Kreins

The Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority continues to put impediments in the way of the disabled and physically challenged. What's worse, Metro officials refuse to listen to reasonable suggestions about how to make it easier for those of us who are disabled.

Some major impediments include: trains that are too high for wheelchairs to access; a lack of reserved seating; absence of the larger, handicapped-friendly elevator call buttons at some key stations; and overuse of elevators by members of the general public, who use them out of convenience rather than necessity. Recently, Metro even has been promoting the use of elevators by the general public.

But the most persistent and egregious problem with Metro service is one that is easily fixed, and that is the failure to run escalators in the direction suggested by traffic flow.

Most patrons probably would appreciate escalators that run in the direction of rush-hour traffic, but for the physically challenged, it is essential.

I know of two Metro stations where reversing the escalators to meet traffic flow demand would be most helpful -- Cleveland Park and Twinbrook -- but the same situation exists at any station that has only one escalator.

Both the Cleveland Park and Twinbrook stations have a single escalator always running in the up mode (Metro policy wherever there is only a single escalator). The street-level entrance at Cleveland Park has two escalators, one on each side of Connecticut Avenue, but both always run in the up mode too.

Traffic flow at these two stations and many others outside the central business district is largely one-directional during rush hour: into the station during the morning, out during the evening. The result is that at Cleveland Park, the large number of users entering the station during the morning rush must walk down the stairs, while a small number of people exiting the station during the morning are able to use the continuously running up escalator. As any physical therapist will confirm, walking downstairs is more dangerous than going up, because more control must be exercised in going down, increasing the danger of falling.

The opposite situation occurs at Twinbrook: The large number of patrons exiting the station during the evening rush must walk down the stairs, while the smattering of people entering during the afternoon rush are able to take the up escalator. The result for physically challenged people is that they are forced to use the elevator (if it is working), or they endanger both themselves and other patrons by taking the stairs.

Running escalators in the direction demanded by traffic flow would alleviate this difficulty while benefiting nearly everyone. The people who object to climbing the stairs could use the elevator. Of course, the ultimate solution to the problem is to install a full complement of escalators at all stations, but until this is done escalators should be reversed according to traffic demand.

-- Gary Thom © Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company  
 

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