The local paper for the Upper er East Side THE BLACK GOLD IN THE FREEZER
WEEK OF AUGUST-SEPTEMBER
27-2
P. 14 >
FARE ACCESS Pressure from ride-hail apps cause increased wait times disabled riders, as fewer accessible cabs are on the road
2015
FDR MEMORIAL GETS NEEDED BOOST An anonymous donation of $150,000 gets the project back on track
BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS
BY RUI MIAO
Disabled New Yorkers who use wheelchair accessible yellow cabs to get around Manhattan are reporting that wait times in the borough are increasing, and industry experts predict the problem will only worsen with pressure from ride-hail apps like Uber. “What I’ve seen is that it’s very unreliable,” said Ronnie Raymond, a disabled woman who lives on the Upper West Side and uses a wheelchair. “Sometimes I call and they send someone within 10-15 minutes. And other times an hour will go by and they’re not able to send anyone.” Before the advent of Uber, Raymond said she used a wheelchair accessible cab three or four times a week. So far this month, she’s used a cab about three times. “If they were reliable I would take a taxi almost every day,” she said. Bill Scalzi, president and founder of Metro Taxi, which is responsible for dispatching the borough’s 581 accessible yellow cabs through a contract with the Taxi and Limousine Commission’s accessible dispatch program, said the problem is that many traditional yellow cab drivers have defected to Uber and similar companies, creating a surplus of non-wheelchair accessible cabs for lease, which are more attractive to drivers. “What’s happened is there’s vehicles that aren’t shifted each day, and when drivers come in to lease a vehicle, they’re just saying ‘give me a (regular yellow cab) because I don’t want to be bothered with an accessible vehicle,’” said Scalzi. “So accessible cars are now sitting there unleased.” Scalzi said according to TLC rules,
Franklin D. Roosevelt sits in a wheelchair, reaching his hand out to a girl, herself standing with the aid of a crutch and leg braces. The moment, however imagined, will be made permanent as a bronze sculpture, landing in the Southpoint Park on Roosevelt Island, to encourage and inspire. It has taken years to make the installation possible. Titled the FDR Hope Memorial, it was several times delayed since its commission in 2009 because of a lack of money. A recent donation of $150,000, though, finally secured the last of the needed funding. The donor remains anonymous. Sculptor Meredith Bergmann, who created the Boston Women’s Memorial as well as dozens of other sculpted memorials and portraits, was selected in December 2010 to create the FDR sculpture. She called the grant a “tremendous boost” for the project. “The work is in stages,” Bergmann said. “The first stage is to design.” An 8-inch-tall model of the statue was unveiled to the public in April 2011. The project then moved into its second phase — sculpting the actual figure and rehearsing the mockup
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Franklin D. Roosevelt; his dog, Fala; and granddaughter, Ruthie Bie, in Hyde Park, N.Y., in 1941. Meredith Bergmann used the picture as a model for her FDR Hope Memorial sculpture for Southpoint Park on Roosevelt Island.
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