A14 WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2020
NFor pedestrians who cannot see or
have limited vision, navigating the cha-
otic sidewalks and crosswalks of New
York City was dicey enough before the
pandemic. But the outbreak, blind people
say, has made crossing the city’s streets
even riskier and more harrowing.
It has reduced the flow of cars and
trucks at times, leaving streets in some
neighborhoods as placid as suburban
lanes. That may sound like a blessing for
blind New Yorkers like Terence Page.
But, in fact, the opposite is true. The
normal roar of traffic moving past pro-
vides clues — often the only ones —
about when it is time to venture into a
crosswalk.
“Quiet is not good for blind people,” Mr.
Page said as he swept his long green
cane across the sidewalk along Sixth Av-
enue in Manhattan, trying to locate the
curb at West 23rd Street.
But Mr. Page had just traversed the av-
enue with confidence because that cross-
ing is equipped with an audible signal
that tells pedestrians when they have the
go-ahead to stride across the pavement.
A vast majority of the city’s 13,200 cross-
ings are not, including the one at 23rd
Street that Mr. Page faced after crossing
Sixth Avenue.
As a result, a federal judge has found
that the city has failed to fully protect
some of its most vulnerable residents.
The judge ruled in October that the
“near-total absence” of those devices —
known as Accessible Pedestrian Signals
— violated the civil rights of blind people
by denying them equal access to the
city’s crosswalks.
Blind New Yorkers “must risk being
hit by cars and bicycles and becoming
stranded in the middle of intersections,”
wrote the judge, Paul A. Engelmayer of
Federal District Court in Manhattan.
Mr. Page, six feet and sturdy, knows
well what the judge was describing.
Standing at the northeast corner of the
normally busy intersection, Mr. Page
hesitated. Without an audible device,
blind pedestrians like him have to guess
when they have the light.
“I know I am taking my life in my
hands,” Mr. Page said, as he prepared to
step off the curb half a block from his
home.
The court ordered the city to negotiate
with the group that filed the suit, the
American Council of the Blind of New
York, on a remedy for the lack of audible
signals. That decision was welcomed by
Mr. Page and advocates for the blind who
have been pressing city officials for
years to address the issue.
“We are thrilled with the dramatic
changes that this victory will mean not
only for those who are blind or low vision,
but for all New Yorkers who want safer
streets,” said Torie Atkinson, a staff at-
torney at Disability Rights Advocates,
which represented the plaintiffs in a
class-action suit filed in 2018.
City officials declined to explain why
audible signals have been installed at
less than 5 percent of the city’s intersec-
tions that have traffic signals.
Instead, Mitch Schwartz, a spokesman
for Mayor Bill de Blasio, issued a state-
ment saying, “The city is dedicated to
making our streets more accessible to all
New Yorkers with and without disabili-
ties, including those are who are blind or
have low vision.” He added that the De-
partment of Transportation plans to con-
tinue to install audible signals across the
city.
Since 2014, the city has had a Vision
Zero policy to reduce pedestrian fatali-
ties, which has included redesigns of in-
tersections and signals. But advocates
argue that some of those changes have
actually made matters worse for the
blind.
At some intersections, the Depart-
ment of Transportation has imple-
mented “leading pedestrian intervals,”
which give walkers a head start of sev-
eral seconds before the light turns green
for the parallel traffic.
But Lori Sharff, former president of
the American Council of the Blind of New
York, said that does not help them be-
cause they rely on traffic noise for cues.
Without the roar of engines in motion,
they are left standing at the curb while
sighted people rush across the street,
Ms. Scharff said.
When in doubt, they often can rely on
other pedestrians to offer guidance or an
elbow to clasp. But in the grip of Covid-19,
fellow travelers are less inclined to get soclose, Mr. Page said.
“There are less people who want to
help you or even touch you,” he ex-
plained. “Since Covid has happened, a lot
of the things that blind people need are
not there.”
To make matters more challenging,
the sidewalks and streets are filled with
new obstacles: dining tables surrounded
by makeshift fences and tents.
As Mr. Page ambled up Seventh Ave-
nue, his face smacked into an umbrella
emblazoned with a Campari logo that
protruded into his path.
The midday journey around Mr. Page’s
Chelsea neighborhood revealed just how
hazardous things would be for blind pe-
destrians in New York even if intersec-
tions were equipped with audible sig-
nals. But there a fewer than 700 of those
beeping devices across the city.
“When I hear an A.P.S., I feel safe,” Mr.
Page said.
In a four-block loop from his building
on the north side of 23rd Street, Mr. Page
encountered a variety of hazards, includ-
ing scaffolding, police barricades, sand-
wich boards promoting businesses,
workmen sprawled on the sidewalk eat-
ing lunch and open stairways to the sub-
way.
He took all those in stride, locatingthem with his ball-tipped cane — “Jets
green” for his favorite football team —
before they caused him any harm. But
the stop-and-go traffic of cars, trucks,
buses and bicycles was a different mat-
ter.
When he returned to Sixth Avenue and
crossed at 22nd Street without the aid of
an audible signal, Mr. Page paused to
catch his breath and admitted how anx-
ious that made him. He said he usually
depended on strangers for guidance,
though he would rather not.
He said people frequently take hold of
his arm, meaning to be helpful. But he
has to explain that he would rather take
hold of theirs so that they can guide him.
Right on cue, a young woman gripped
Mr. Page’s elbow and offered to help him
across 23rd Street at Seventh Avenue.
He switched to holding her arm and chat-
ted with her as they crossed, even
though he had the aid of an audible signal
there.
The woman, Yolanda Yona, an interior
designer and model from Zimbabwe,
said she had noticed the beeping that em-
anated from yellow devices on each cor-
ner. “I just like helping people I guess,”
she said, adding that she was undeterred
by the pandemic.
Even a few audible signals would be a
godsend for Myrna Votta, who has had tonegotiate the streets of Brooklyn
Heights without them for more than 40
years. Ms. Votta, 81, made use of audible
signals in Manhattan when she taught
music at the 59th Street headquarters of
the charitable organization for the visu-
ally impaired known as the Lighthouse.
She occasionally encounters an audi-
ble signal when she takes her guide dog,
a yellow Labrador retriever, to the veter-
inarians at the Animal Medical Center on
the Upper East Side.
“They really are very helpful,” Ms.
Votta said, especially at intersections
where it otherwise would be easy to find
yourself and your guide dog headed in
the wrong direction. “You’ve got to be
lined up the right way,” she explained. “If
you’re facing diagonally, the dog’s going
to take you that way.”
Ms. Votta said she and her husband,
Pat, who is also blind but uses a cane, go
out of their way to reach certain places in
the neighborhood, including a favorite
diner, because some intersections are too
dangerous. She said she hoped the
court’s ruling would force the city to in-
stall more audible signals soon in Brook-
lyn Heights and throughout the city.
“The whole deal for me is let’s make
the playing field even,” Ms. Votta said. “If
you can see, you’ve got a much better
chance of not getting killed than I have.”A federal judge ruled that despite tactile pavement and audible crossing signals at some intersections, New York City has failed to protect blind people.On Quieted City Streets, Perils for the Sightless Increase
Terence Page said that traffic noise is crucial in helping him navigate his Chelsea neighborhood. On Saturday, he received assistance from Yolanda Yona.PHOTOGRAPHS BY SARAH BLESENER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESBy PATRICK McGEEHANIt was, by most standards, a short stay.
The pop-up metal monolith that became
the focus of international attention after
it was spotted in a remote section of the
Utah desert on Nov. 18 was dismantled
just 10 days later. On Tuesday a local out-
doorsman claimed credit on social media
for the sculpture’s removal.
The office of the San Juan County
Sheriff at first announced that it was de-
clining to investigate the case in the ab-
sence of complaints about missing prop-
erty. To underscore that point, it up-
loaded a “Most Wanted” poster on its
website in which the faces of suspects
were replaced by nine big-eyed aliens.
But by the end of Monday, the sheriff’s
office had reversed its position and an-
nounced that it was planning a joint in-
vestigation with the Bureau of Land
Management, a federal agency.
An adventure photographer, Ross
Bernards, disclosed part of what hap-
pened on Instagram. Mr. Bernards, 34, of
Edwards, Colo., was visiting the mono-
lith on Friday night when, he said, four
men arrived as if out of nowhere to dis-
mantle the sculpture. Mr. Bernards had
driven six hours for the chance to photo-
graph the sculpture. Using upscale Lume
Cube lights attached to a drone, he
produced a series of glowy, moonlit pic-
tures in which the monolith glistens
against the red cliffs and the deep blue of
the night sky.
Around 8:40 p.m., he said, the men ar-
rived, their voices echoing in the canyon.
Working in pairs, they gave the monolith
hard shoves, and it started to tilt toward
the ground. Then they pushed it in the
opposite direction, trying to uproot it.
“This is why you don’t leave trash in
the desert,” one of them said, suggesting
that he viewed the monolith as an eye-
sore, according to Mr. Bernards.
The sculpture popped out and landed
with a bang. Then the men broke it apart
and ferried it off in a wheelbarrow.
“As they walked off with the pieces,
one of them said, ‘Leave no trace,’ ” Mr.
Bernards said in a telephone interview.He did not photograph the men who
took down the sculpture, saying he “did-
n’t want to start a confrontation by bring-
ing out my camera and putting it in their
face — especially since I agreed with
what they were doing.”
But a friend who accompanied him on
the trip, Michael James Newlands, 38, of
Denver, took a few quick photographs
with his cellphone.
“It must have been 10 or 15 minutes at
most for them to knock over the monolith
and pull it out,” he told The New York
Times. “We didn’t know who they were,
and we were not going to do anything to
stop them.” He added, “They just came in
there to execute and they were like, ‘This
is our mission.’ ”
The blurry photos show several men
working beneath the cover of darkness,
wearing gloves but not face masks,
standing above the fallen monolith. It
turns out to be a hollow structure with an
armature made from plywood.
The men who removed the sculpture
may not have been the same people who
installed it in the first place. On Tuesday,
a professional sportsman, Andy L. Lew-is, took credit for the sculpture’s disap-
pearance, posting a video on Facebook.
Mr. Lewis, from nearby Moab, is a 34-
year-old slackline performer who spe-
cializes in high-altitude stunts. Asked
why he chose to remove the sculpture, he
said, in a text to a Times reporter, “This is
probably a question better answered in
person — maybe live with an audience
that is ready to listen to something they
may not want to actually hear.”
Mr. Lewis pleaded guilty in 2014 to in-
terfering in a BASE jumping investiga-tion at Arches National Park. He re-
ceived a fine and 18 months of probation,
during which time he was prohibited
from entering a national forest.
The video that he posted consists of a
short shadowy clip with jumpy footage in
which the monolith, lying in a wheelbar-
row, is hastily ferried away. “The safe
word is run,” one man says as his head-
lamp illuminates the fallen sculpture.
Another Moab resident, Sylvan Chris-
tensen, said he too was a part of the dis-
mantling of the monolith. In a statement
on Tuesday evening, he explained that
the group “removed the Utah Monolith
because there are clear precedents for
how we share and standardize the use of
our public lands” and that the area was
imperiled by the increasing number of
visitors.
Initially, the monolith was linked to
John McCracken, a California-born artist
who died in 2011 and harbored a taste for
science fiction. But representatives of
the artist and his estate have said they do
not believe the work is his.How a Mysterious Monolith Vanished Overnight
Cellphone photos show four men
dismantling the monolith in Utah on
Friday. Two Utah residents later said
they took part in the removal.MICHAEL JAMES NEWLANDSThis article is by Serge F. Kovaleski, Deb-
orah Solomonand Zoe Rosenberg.
Susan Beachy contributed research.