The city’s long-discussed project to return automobiles to Main Street downtown is behind schedule because of federal regulations that guarantee access for riders with disabilities to all train cars at every Metro Rail station.

But now local officials and federal transit authorities have worked out what may be an acceptable arrangement, according to Richard M. Tobe, the city’s commissioner for economic development, inspections and permits.

“The federal government has given us a letter that I believe is a way to go forward,” Tobe said.

The way forward will likely involve several stops at the same above-ground station — if passengers with disabilities need them.

City officials had hoped to begin the first segment of the project, between Tupper and Chippewa streets, last summer.

Cars, which have not been able to drive on most of Main Street downtown since the light rail rapid transit system opened in 1985, will share a redesigned road with the trains when the project is finished.

Federal regulations requiring that people with disabilities have access to all transit cars came into place “very long in our development of the project,” Tobe said.

Such access has not been a problem on the below-ground section of the transit line, but above ground on Main Street downtown, people with disabilities have access to only the front car on each train, via the ramp at each station.

Those stations, now more than 20 years old, would be torn down and replaced with newer, smaller ones under the city’s Cars Sharing Main Street master plan.

If the new guidelines were followed, Tobe said, “It would have meant an 80-foot-long raised platform at each station.”

In a meeting with federal Transit Administration officials, the city said fire officials stressed that a platform that long would interfere with their ability to fight fires in buildings along Main Street.

“From the perspective of fire safety, it turned out to be an impossibility,” Tobe said.

Tobe said the federal agency recently sent the city a letter that puts the project back on track.

“We’ve discussed with federal officials the way [the new regulations] would apply to our light rail system, the intent to which it was [meant] to apply to a mixed [above- and belowground] system like ours,” Tobe said.
The letter sets out stipulations to accommodate riders with disabilities, stating that these stipulations “must be implemented as part of the project.”

The stipulations include the allowance for trains to stop more than once at each station if a disabled person who is not in the front car wants to disembark.

The first car would stop at the station, as usual, but the train then would stop at the station again if a person with a disability in another car needed to get off.

Buzzers would be used in all cars to let operators know someone in one of the rear cars needs an additional stop.

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