Michael Ring calls for accessible bus stops and signage at ferry landings

Thank you so much, Assemblywoman.

Our next panel is going to be Monica Bartley from Disabled in Action, Jean Ryan,

Kathleen Collins, Michael Ring, and Jabrel Jolo from the Flossie organization.

Thank you for joining us.

And thank you for waiting.

It's a longer hearing than we expected.

You may begin whenever you're ready.

Hi, my name is Michael Ring.

I'm Vice President of Disabled in Action of Greater New York.

If anyone needs a verbal description of my appearance, I'm a 63-year-old white guy wearing a hat that says Disabled in Action and a hoodie that says I ran a marathon because I'm complex.

And I wanted to talk about the ferries.

I really like the ferries.

I enjoy taking the ferry whenever I can.

My children have half a dozen friends that work on the ferry.

But if you're disabled, it's hard to find the ferry.

And I would urge the city to add an accessorized bus stop at every ferry landing so that accessorized knows where to go.

And like the curb cut effect, that curb cuts help everyone, if every ferry landing, ferry stop had an accessorized bus stop, that would mean it would have an address that's a drop-off.

It would be an easy place to find if you want to get to the ferry.

And I often am near the Pier 6 ferry in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

There's no signage that tells you how to get to it.

to the ferry.

So if there would be accessible signage, how to get from the curb to the ferry, it would just be a very helpful thing.

More people would be using the ferry.

And one other thing I wanted to add, this summer I happened to travel a lot.

I was in cities that had great ferry systems.

Sydney and Vancouver, people use the ferry a lot.

It's one payment system.

You know, it would be very complicated, but the city's good at doing big, complicated things.

If the OmniCard would work on the ferry, more people would use the ferry.

It would, you know, make it a transfer or maybe a slight additional fare.

You guys do the math.

I would encourage that.

And I'm running out of time, so I'll...

Thank you.