Advocates for people with disabilities are furious after the regional agency that manages the island’s commuter rail system, AMT, revealed its new Du Canal station in Lachine is being built without an elevator.
“I feel like a second-class citizen,” said Linda Gauthier, one of the founders of the disability advocacy group, RAPLIQ.
“We pay exactly the same price [as everyone else] but we don’t have the same services.”
Last spring, RAPLIQ filed a class-action lawsuit, suing the City of Montreal and the STM, the agency that manages the Metro system, because that network wasn’t accessible to those with disabilities.
The AMT listed three main reasons why an elevator couldn’t be built: the cost is too great, the station is considered temporary during the Turcot Interchange work and the trestle is too high.
The agency also points out the elevator wouldn’t be useful since none of stations on the Candiac Line has elevators anyway.
For Gauthier, none of those reasons hold up.
“They have to start somewhere,” she said.
“They say there’s no money in the envelope, but they should have thought about that before.”
The Du Canal Station is slated to open in January.