The Metropolitan Transportation Authority wants to build new entrances so the disabled can access the subway at 68th Street, but some Upper East Side residents say the plan will diminish the quality of their block. NY1’s Tina Redwine filed the following report.
People who live on East 69th Street between Lexington and Park say it’s a special place.
“It is a beautiful block. Quiet. It has been here for a long time and I don’t think it will enhance our street at all,” said one resident.
“It” is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s plan to build new entrances to the 68th Street subway station located at 69th Street and Lexington Ave while the ones at 68th Street are shut down for a year to allow an elevator to be installed there.
Residents worry the $57 million project will lower their quality of life and their property values.
However, MTA officials say it has to be done to give people with disabilities more access and to ease overcrowding at the second busiest local station in the city.
Riders welcome the change.
“At my age, climbing up the steps isn’t fun,” said one subway rider.
“It’s difficult because you know you can’t move, there is no space for you to even stand sometimes with the rush hour, and you get late for classes and miss your trains,” said another.
The MTA considered putting the stairs at 70th Street or down at 67th Street, but the subway platform doesn’t extend that far, so it would cost more and take longer to build stairs here.
Officials say the most cost-effective plan is to put the stairs at 69th Street.
An outside consultant’s environmental study is due in June, but residents have hired their own experts and a lawyer whose political connections go back to the administration of Mayor John Lindsay in the 1960s.
“We don’t necessarily agree that the MTA will be doing a fair study. It’s easier to back into a preconceived plan, decision, than it is to go out and do an honest study,” said Sid Davidoff of Davidoff, Malito & Hutcher.
Davidoff said putting the stairs on 67th Street where there is already a bus stop makes more sense and that his experts will come up with their own estimate of what it should cost.
The local community board said it will hold a public hearing on the plan as soon as the MTA’s environmental study is done.
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