For two months during the summer of 2018, the bathrooms on CTrail Hartford Line trains were closed. It is a classic example of someone following the letter instead of the spirit of the law. Listen and learn.

Disability Rights Connecticut rightfully filed an ADA complaint with the Federal Railroad Administration in advance of the opening of the new-at-the-time commuter line. Six months prior, the DOT stated it planned to eventually install accessible bathrooms. When? That part was unclear, and perhaps part of the issue. A “we’re getting around to it” vibe is not the same as saying “parts are on order and expected in 4-6 weeks.” When it comes to government, all levels of it, projects often get kicked down the road. Communication with the public is often lacking. It makes sense why the public may not trust a vague “we’re good for it” attitude.

Here’s where things went sideways. Instead of threatening the DOT with daily fines or helping them to find the money to get this done (I’m assuming finance was the hold up since that’s what I’m always told in a “there, there, young lady, you don’t understand the way of the world” tone) what the FRA did was tell CTDOT it needed to lock all train bathrooms until at least one accessible bathroom per consist (what normal people would think of as the train) was opened.

Everybody pees or nobody pees is a really fucked up approach.

It makes even less sense when you learn that the FRA granted the DOT with a temporary pass on the bathrooms before all this.

If riding from Springfield to New Haven, that’s a long time to hold it, made longer if the train has delays.

What happened was that people with disabilities are not a monolith, and someone with Crohn’s disease filed a complaint about having no bathroom access. Not all disabilities are visible.

Could the DOT have communicated with disability rights organizations much earlier about this? Could they have prioritized retrofitting the bathrooms better, making their planned opening date much sooner and less mysterious than “sometime in the Fall”? Could they have borrowed even one of the Shore Line East trains with accessible bathrooms during the interim, making it less of an all or nothing situation?

Now, hold that thought while we think about buses.

Am I the asshole for telling the City of Hartford that they installed a new bus shelter wrong in the place where the previous bus shelter was installed wrong? I know I’m not, but they made it sound that way when through a Facebook* post by Hartford 311 they doubled down and insisted that this mess up at Park and Laurel Streets was fine because to be ADA accessible, it needed to be done like this.

  1. It is not fine. Anyone who rides the bus can tell you that if you cannot see the bus coming from inside the shelter, it is not a functioning piece of infrastructure. This is not CTfastrak where drivers stop at all stations. On regular routes, drivers stop when they see people waiting, and sometimes, not unless the people waiting give the appearance of wanting to board that bus because there are folks who chill at bus shelters because that’s where the benches are on their block. If an opaque panel means the driver cannot see people inside the shelter, they aren’t stopping. If an opaque panel prevents would-be passengers from seeing the bus approach, they can’t signal intent to ride. The busted up, painted over shelters they just replaced had also been installed incorrectly and years of graffiti made them into creepy, dark boxes that few used. A few years ago, someone was found murdered in one. If placed right, it makes less of a difference if what should be the back panel gets painted over because the front is open to most vehicle and foot traffic. This is not something people who drive everywhere are going to think about.
  2. Hire people who have creative thinking skills. This will not be every hire, but it is clear that DPW needs more of those among their ranks. If absolutely nothing else, someone from the City should have recognized that installing this backwards would make it basically useless, wasting money. They could have — before various residents and bus riders pointed it out to them — removed the opaque panel. The orientation would have still been weird, but there would be a semi-functional bus shelter. There are bus shelters throughout the city that workers could have taken a look at for models of how to install because I have definitely seen and used ones in narrower spaces than this, and the difference is that the shelter was set back instead of placed at the edge of the roadway. People with wheelchairs, walkers, and strollers are all still able to use that sidewalk. It’s obvious that whomever was tasked just used the footprint of the previous one.
  3. It is possible to work with adjacent property owners to find solutions. As far as I know, Pope Commons is owned by the same person who controls Parkville Market and a number of other properties in the Frog Hollow and Parkville neighborhoods. His properties tend to be not especially pedestrian-friendly, which is ironic given how this area of Hartford enjoys an abundance of foot traffic. Either way, people are going from the grocery and dollar stores, along with laundromat, to this bus stop — and even if someone does not care about the general public’s experience, they should make the trip easier for their own customers who already have to take a long route around because after all these years, the plaza is still oriented toward drivers. There have been crashes at the plaza driveways, which at any point could be reconfigured for safer use. Just last month, a car and bicycle collided at the Park Street driveway; the cyclist was riding on the sidewalk because there are no bike lanes here, while the driver was exiting the plaza’s overly wide driveway. In 2018, there was a similar collision between car and bicycle in the same spot with cyclist traveling on sidewalk. Given all of the other changes this property owner could make so that his plaza is safer and more convenient to access, collaborating on a solution about a bus shelter might be the quickest and cheapest item for him to address. Bus service on this route is hourly (or worse) on Sundays. Why not make the wait less irritating for plaza visitors?

If you want people riding public transportation because it reduces congestion and improves air quality, then you need to make the experience less ridiculous and arduous. Longer and more frequent bus and train service during non-commuter hours is part of it, but so is making sure people can wait for the bus without getting soaked to the bone.

*I’m not linking to the Facebook post because I’m too embarrassed for them and hoping they’ve realized on their own that a response filled with bruised ego is not what the public needs.

Climate Possibilities is a new series about climate mitigation, along with resilience, resistance, and restoration. It’s about human habitat preservation. It’s about loving nature and planet Earth, and demanding the kind of change that gives future generations the opportunity for vibrant lives. Doomers will be eaten alive, figuratively. All photographs are taken in Hartford, Connecticut unless stated otherwise.