If the legislature fails to act, blocked bus stops will remain dangerous for people with disabilities

Nobody should risk their safety when boarding or exiting a bus. But for many people with disabilities, including me, this is our reality when drivers illegally park their vehicles at bus stops. And the Massachusetts state legislature is running out of time to do something about it.

When bus stops are obstructed by illegally parked vehicles, buses can’t pull up properly to the curb. This forces riders to navigate through active travel lanes and around parked cars and trucks – which blocks drivers’ view of riders – to reach the bus. For people who use wheelchairs, they might not be able to reach the bus at all, or risk serious injury using wheelchair access ramps from the bus deployed to the street, where they are dangerously steeper than when the ramp is deployed to the curb.

For people who are blind or have low vision, or who are deaf or hard of hearing, stepping off the bus into the middle of the street puts us at risk of being hit by a vehicle or cyclist. I know because this has happened to me.

A few years ago, I was injured by a cyclist while stepping off the bus into the street instead of safely onto the curb, due to an illegally parked vehicle blocking the bus stop. My white cane got caught in the bicycle’s spokes. This situation was neither safe nor fair for me or the cyclist who hit me. It could have been avoided if the bus had been able to pull up to the curb.

I am a blind and deaf woman. Like many people with disabilities, I depend on public transportation to connect me to the world.

Public transit is my lifeline. And illegal parking at bus stops takes that away.

Massachusetts lawmakers have the opportunity to end this safety and access crisis for people with disabilities – but they have to act fast. There is legislation being worked on in the state Senate next week that would enable the MBTA and local regional transit authorities to utilize bus-mounted camera systems to detect and enforce parking violations in bus stops and bus lanes – parking violations that seriously undermine the safety, accessibility and performance of transit service. If passed, this legislation will allow transit agencies across the state to utilize cameras to detect vehicles that are obstructing bus stop zones or bus lanes and send evidence to parking enforcement officers for determination of whether a parking violation has occurred.

Massachusetts would not be the first state to implement automated bus stop and bus lane enforcement – far from it. New York, California, Colorado and Washington State, as well as the cities of Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., have all passed legislation empowering transit agencies with proven tools to keep riders safe.

New technology has made it possible to quantify the enormous scale of bus stop parking violations. In Washington, DC, over 17,000 bus stop parking violations were detected in only 44 days. In Philadelphia, over 32,000 of these violations were detected in just over two months. And that was only on two bus routes.

But as any transit rider with a disability will tell you: just one vehicle parked at a bus stop is enough to put someone’s safety at risk, or create cascading consequences for the rider who can’t board or exit their bus – like missing a healthcare appointment; being late to work or school; not being there at your child’s dance recital at their starring moment. Blocked bus stops cause us to miss out on life.

Massachusetts lawmakers must enable the MBTA and transit agencies in the state to deploy automated bus stop and bus lane enforcement and make public transit accessible and safe for everyone. If they miss this opportunity, they are dooming people with disabilities to the dangerous status quo. But if they pass this law – they will save more people, like me, from being injured.

Cassandra Xavier is an executive board member of the Riders’ Transportation Access Group (RTAG) 

Cassandra Xavier writes that she was injured by a cyclist while stepping off the bus into the street instead of onto the curb, due to an illegally parked vehicle blocking the bus stop. (Photo courtesy Cassandra Xavier)