Nearly a third of Metro’s 11,490 bus stops are not handicapped accessible, leaving riders in wheelchairs unable to access the bus system, according to the transit agency. Kathi and Pat Spray, who live in Riverdale in Prince George’s County and both use wheelchairs, have felt it firsthand.
The closest bus stop to their home is on Kenilworth Avenue, but that section of the busy road doesn’t have any sidewalks for them to safely travel to the stop.
And when it rains, they risk getting their chairs stuck in the mud if they go off-road to get to the stop.
They tried to get a sidewalk added after moving there in 2000, but they got passed around by local officials saying the state needed to fix it, and the state saying the county must do it. “We got tired of playing pingpong working through the phone system,” she said.
So now they must rely on MetroAccess much of the time to get around.
That’s a double problem, according to Metro board member Tom Downs.
Not having accessible stops isn’t acceptable, he said, and it’s also pricey for Metro. It pushes riders with disabilities to use the federally mandated MetroAccess service, which is more expensive for the agency than either bus or rail, costing Metro about $40 per one-way trip.
But Metro doesn’t control all the stops where its buses go.
“We don’t own the property, we don’t own the stops,” said Jack Requa, assistant general manager of Bus Service.
The agency owns 597 shelters, but the local communities own and maintain the rest. Even so, about 180 of the Metro-owned bus shelters sit in areas where someone else owns the right of way, according to the agency, meaning that Metro can’t fix the curbs or sidewalks leading to them.
A bus stop is only as good as the sidewalks and curb cuts around it for those in wheelchairs. Some stops aren’t even safe to access for those who can walk there, lacking nearby crosswalks or are blocked by construction.
But it’s a difficult problem to fix, Metro officials said, because the agency cannot force jurisdictions to improve the stops. Many local communities don’t have the money to add sidewalks.
“It’s a collective effort and it takes collective resources,” said James Hamre, Metro’s head of bus planning.
