Musings: Transit riders shouldn't have to stand for this

Metro transit riders are facing a growing shortage of seats — not on trains and buses but while waiting in stations.

Seating is being removed, with a seeming purpose. Rather than help homeless people, the transit system is shunning them by removing benches, to the detriment of paying passengers who deserve to sit. Officials won’t admit it, but no other explanation appears credible.

Look at the busy renovated Mineola station. The Long Island Rail Road spent millions of taxpayer dollars installing the Third Track, new platforms, patterned plaza, fences, railings, glazed bricks, digital signs and an overpass walkway.

But gone are all the benches that had lined the platforms on both sides. The south waiting room with benches inside and out — all gone. The only surviving seats are inside the ticket office and bathroom building. But it’s locked overnight and doesn’t serve south side riders.

The only other place to sit wasn’t intended for it: the base of a statue. People rest there. The elderly and disabled really need to do so. Removing seats violates the spirit of accessibility laws.

In lieu of benches, the LIRR installed metal slats, a few feet long, to lean your rump on. They’re slanted, so you (and the homeless) cannot sit or put down a briefcase or coffee.

The architects must know we want to sit, as we used to do, but they wouldn’t let us. We got token slats, a tease.

Could it be, as one rider said, that the LIRR is concerned that patients from the nearby NYU Langone Hospital-Long Island, would linger? I never saw a problem. And why should innocent passengers be deprived en masse?

Check the Hempstead terminal, on which the LIRR spent millions to rebuild. Its platforms have no benches. The enticing station building features a ticket window, toilet, waiting room, benches, even free books. But it’s open only 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays. Otherwise, it’s locked. Its 10 big hanging globe lamps burn constantly, wasting electricity to illuminate a comfy lobby where people are mostly barred, pressing their noses on the windows to peer in.

Across the street is the main NICE bus terminal. Inside, no seating. None. Outside, the bus bays have some benches — in summer heat and winter cold, rain and snow. Riders brave the weather to sit. Why not inside?

Passengers, who pay for tickets and taxes to fund stations, deserve to sit. Don’t punish them in a perverse policy to banish the homeless, which helps no one.

We all deserve better.

— Bruce Lambert, Hempstead