LIRR completes Copiague station elevator, part of $169M for access projects

For Khalia Hayslett, a Long Island Rail Road station without an elevator represents a part of New York that she may never get to see.

“It is one of those things where you’re just stuck,” said Hayslett, of Brooklyn, who uses a wheelchair and relies on public transportation. “The ability to travel independently is such an important part of our lives.”

Now, one more LIRR station is within reach from Hayslett and other riders with disabilities, as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Thursday announced the completion of an elevator installation project at the Copiague station.

MTA officials said Copiague is the first of four Babylon line stations — along with Amityville, Lindenhurst, and Massapequa Park — that will add elevators this year, making 114 of the railroad’s 126 stations fully accessible. Speaking at a ceremony at Copiague Station on Thursday, MTA chairman and CEO Janno Lieber vowed that the LIRR will “get them all finished” in the transit authority’s next five-year capital program, which begins next year.

“New Yorkers with disabilities deserve a quality of life that everybody else has access to. And that means getting out of your homes to go to work, to go to school, to go to play and visit others, like everybody else gets to do,” MTA chief accessibility officer Quemuel Arroyo said. “That’s what we’re delivering today.”

The Copiague project was included in a $169 million station project that includes elevator installations at nine stations. Three of those are in Southeast Queens. Valley Stream and Auburndale are having existing elevators replaced.

Hayslett called the MTA's efforts — which followed a series of lawsuits from disability rights advocates — the “gold standard” for addressing accessibility concerns in the region. 

“It’s such a great moment in time for us New Yorkers with disabilities to be able to get to the outskirts of New York City,” Hayslett said, moments before boarding the new Copiague elevator on the first part of her return trip.

Therése Brzezinski, director of planning and public policy for the Long Island Center for Independent Living in Levittown, noted that accessibility upgrades have always been “a particular challenge” throughout the LIRR system, because so many stations are elevated. Copiague was originally built in 1902, and was reconstructed as an elevated station in 1973, according to the railroad.

“It's been a long time coming. And this has been hard-fought by advocates, by individuals with disabilities who really pushed hard to get this done,” Brzezinski said in a telephone interview.

Still on the to-do list is the LIRR’s Mets-Willets Point station, which serves CitiField and the Flushing Meadows-Corona Park sports complex. It was initially slated to be made accessible as part of an effort to build an AirTrain linking the station to LaGuardia Airport, but Gov. Kathy Hochul nixed that project last year.

In a statement Thursday, Hochul said she is “committed to improving accessibility across the MTA and ensuring the disability community has a voice and a seat at the table in deciding the future of transit in New York.”

Key to funding that future, MTA officials have said, is congestion pricing. The plan to charge new tolls for vehicles driving below 60th Street in Manhattan is being relied upon to generate $1 billion annually for transit infrastructure upgrades.

But, the plan is facing several legal challenges, including some that will be heard in a Manhattan federal courtroom on Friday.

Speaking on Long Island for the first time since the Town of Hempstead became the first municipality in Nassau or Suffolk to file a lawsuit to stop the plan, Lieber expressed optimism that some Nassau and Suffolk residents will come to appreciate the benefits of congestion pricing, which include reducing traffic in Manhattan and improving air quality.

“What we’ve seen in London and Stockholm and other world cities is that, while there is controversy leading up to the implementation of congestion pricing, afterward, support for it has grown.”

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.