TTC Subway Blue Priority Seats: Not as Accessible as May Seem

Waiting

To continue from my first post on the TTC Stakeholders Information Meeting:

On my way to the meeting at TTC headquarters above Davisville station, a fire investigation broke out at Union station, forcing trains to turn back at Bloor and Osgoode stations and forcing me to go through Yonge/Bloor station if I was to get on the northbound train to Davisville on time. I was not thrilled.



Nobody likes that station. The Yonge platform is too narrow for the crowds -- Spacing magazine has voiced what most of us think, that someone is going to fall onto the tracks and die -- and the entire station is overburdened and constantly busy. This is on top of all the "little" things that make the TTC hard to navigate, like bad signage and morphing subway line names.


For someone like me who is unable to navigate walking, running, jostling people easily, it's an effing nightmare.


But I had no choice. The weather was atrocious, thus few people would be at the meeting and I'd have a chance to state all my grievances face to face with TTC management. I wasn't about to let this opportunity slip by, like so many different opportunities had for me, no matter how fearful I was of the station. Fortunately, my CNIB orientation and mobility trainer had taken me through the station twice before, the first time having to physically guide me as I froze.


Step one was getting off the train at Yonge. My CNIB trainer had repeatedly instructed me to "go to the wall," wait till I wasn't dizzy anymore, take my time, if the train leaves another will come so don't rush. I rehearsed his instructions before I got off. To my amazement, once the people who got off with me disappeared, the platform was empty! This was an effing miracle!! All I had to do was navigate the to-my-perception very long walk to the escalator entrance by hugging the escalator wall and trying not to feel overbalanced by how narrow the platform is between the wall and track edge.


The narrowness of the platform makes it difficult to walk when you're unsteady. It feels like walking on a tightrope. Anytime you encounter someone standing against the wall and you have to edge out closer to the track to walk past them, it feels like you could fall off. Lack of accessibility in thoughtless design extends everywhere on the TTC. I once saw one old guy with a walker yell hoarsely at a group lazily talking, "Get out of the way. Get out of the way!" Well, that's one way to remain on your feet because they did get out of his way. Anywho . . .


Next miracle: by the time I had made my careful, pause-walk-pause way to the escalator, it was still empty!! Holy ---!! What a relief. I rode to the top, the music coming down from the busker starting to throw me off. I braced for the crowds.


There were none.


No people.


WTF‽ The transit gods were smiling down on me. A train was in the station. Everyone had already stuffed it and were waiting for it to go. The few stragglers in the distance hustled on. The biggest impediment to me walking to wait by a column for the next train was getting by the busker. His music overwhelmed my sensitive ears and overloaded my auditory system. Not even my earbuds could protect me.


Relieved at cautiously creeping by him to the column safely, I searched for the ad sign with the next train information. My heart quailed. Seven minutes. How could that be? There should be more trains if they're all turning back at Bloor, no? This was going to be the nightmare I feared.


Sure enough, within a couple of minutes, the hordes arrived. I stared at the TTC employees on the southbound platform, wondering why they were all over there? I looked around again. My problem with walking is I can see really really well, way way better than I have my whole life. I have to relearn how to perceive, but I have no trouble anymore identifying people. If there had been any TTC employees anywhere near me, I would have spotted their reflective vests, or blue uniforms, or red smocks. Nothing. Not a one.


It suddenly occurred to me that I needed help getting a priority seat, that not having that help during a TTC SNAFU when customers are pissed at another delay and will stampede on the moment the doors open, was another accessibility fail.


I have a brain injury and am slow to process unexpected situations. By the time it occurred to me to yell at the staff across the tracks and ask them to come over to help and to begin to send that thought to my vocal chords for my voice to vocalize the thought, the train was trundling in. Luckily it moved so slowly, I had time to size up the uncaring people around me, steel myself so that the moment the doors opened, I could rudely cut off the agile woman who was stampeding for the priority seat. I got it. She sat down beside me radiating pissed-off vibes. I didn't care. I cared more about becoming dizzy and nauseated if I was forced to stand on a moving train. A cane is simply not enough of a message to most TTC customers to let me get on first -- as is a TTC courtesy rule -- and to allow me to sit in the blue priority seats.


We recently had a terrible event in Toronto, and people talked about how they would be kinder and more ready to give up the blue priority seats. Hahaha! Nope. I have spent the week politely but firmly staring right into many faces and asking them to get up. One young woman muttered imprecations at me. But got up anyway. She had no idea that the seat was blue for a reason.


It is cognitively and emotionally exhausting having to ask people to GET UP, to have to think ahead about how to beat an able-bodied person to the seat at my relative snail pace.


Quite frankly, being forced to be rude and aggressive doesn't float my boat. It's just another way the systemic ableism of the TTC makes the system fatiguing and stressful. It doesn't surprise me that people who use Wheel-Trans would want to have nothing to do with the regular fixed-route TTC. It doesn't surprise me people are anxious about the TTC's new Family of Services program.


What I needed that day at Yonge/Bloor was staff to ensure I got on first and had a chance to get the priority seat. Even when few people are around, I could use the help. It's amazing how many people will zip in front of me to grab the blue priority seat next to the pole. I happen to need that pole. Standing up from the other seat is doable once the train is stopped but not as easy for me. When I was first recovering from my eye surgery, it was bloody impossible.

At Davisville, the BIST staff member who invited me met me on the platform because I hadn't been there before and would be quite unsteady without someone to guide me. It takes two or three guided walks in a new place before my eyes, brain, and feet can work together to ensure I can make my way without being dizzy or very unbalanced. It takes several practice walks with another person and then on my own before I'm no longer unbalanced. I also didn't know the way.

After the meeting, she took me back to the platform. We waited at the guard end of the station for the train. It was so full when it arrived and I was so tired that I just stared at the occupied blue priority seats through the open doors and said that I'd wait for the next train. I had no energy left in me to tell people to get up.


All of a sudden the guard asked me through his open window if I wanted to get on. I told him my dilemma. He said no problem, get on, he'd ensure I got a seat.


OMG! It was like the parting of the sea!! Multiple people shot up off the blue seats as he came out his door and told people I needed to sit. I was so grateful but so exhausted that I don't know if I thanked him properly enough.


His action was exactly what I had complained to the TTC's Mitch Underhay and Dean Milton was missing at Yonge/Bloor. His help was what I had needed and is what is needed to ensure people forced off Wheel-Trans on to Family of Services can use the regular system safely, without fear and trepidation. Funny how the universe makes your very point for you.

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