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Midnight at the Lawrence Amtrack Station

Depot Redux, a local civic organization trying to restore Lawrence's Amtrack Train Depot, and a group of local musicians hold a live music event Friday night.

Congressman Dennis Moore (D-Kan.) will come to the Lawrence Amtrak depot, 413 E. 7th St., June 29 to be debriefed about improvements to the depot, as well as the city’s plans to take ownership of the station from the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway company.

Moore will hear from Mayor Robert Chestnut, representatives from the volunteer group Depot Redux, which works to restore and preserve the historic station, and representatives from the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway company, which currently owns the building.

Carey Maynard-Moody, chairwoman of Depot Redux, said her organization asked the city of Lawrence to take ownership of the station to ensure its restoration and preservation. Maynard-Moody said city officials, including Chestnut, were reluctant to take ownership of the depot because the platform needed to be rebuilt to be wheelchair accessible in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act passed in 1990.

But Chestnut agreed to support a transfer of ownership to the city just before Amtrak announced in March that it was giving the station $600,000 from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus package, to build a new, wheelchair-accessible platform for the station. City ownership will make it possible to list the 1955 building in the National Register of Historic Places, allowing the depot to also receive funds for preservation.

Maynard-Moody said Amtrak’s investment in the new platform was the most expensive upgrade for the depot. As part of the stimulus package, Amtrak was given $1.3 billion earlier this year, she said. Maynard-Moody said Amtrak chose to invest the $600,000 in the Lawrence depot because of the efforts of the Depot Redux group. Because the money has to be spent within 18 months, the new platform will be under construction within the next year and three months, she said.

Bob Mikesic is interim executive director and advocacy coordinator at Independence Inc., a company that provides advocacy, services and education for people with disabilities. Mikesic said the new platform would provide a much more accessible option.

“It sounds like this was a major alteration,” Mikesic said. “It’s more likely that people will use it since bus routes have been reduced and trains are an affordable option.”

Since the Americans with Disabilities Act passed, Lawrence has made many of its buildings, sidewalks and other facilities more accessible. Mikesic said older buildings’ requirements were different because some were not designed to accommodate wheelchairs. He said the city did a good job of making sure buildings met requirements for accessibility.

Tiffany Huggard-Lee, Columbia, Mo., graduate student, said transportation could be a difficult issue for students with disabilities, especially those who did not drive. She said the Amtrak platform renovations were an important improvement because they would allow accessible travel outside of Lawrence instead of limiting the majority of accessible transportation to destinations within the city limits.

“I think having a variety of accessible transportation options is extremely beneficial to society because it allows people to travel on their own terms with a minimum of barriers and hassle,” Huggard-Lee said. “Hopefully students will find rail travel to be a practical option for transportation when other methods of travel are not as convenient.”

Huggard-Lee said no one transportation method could be ideal for everyone, so it was important to have a variety of travel options students could choose from.

Dot Nary, Lawrence graduate student, said the new platform was an important improvement to the accessibility of transportation. Nary, who uses a wheelchair, said that everyone should care about the improvements in accessibility throughout the community and that the train was an option all students should consider.

“It will give all students more options in these times of high gas prices and when people are recognizing the need to reduce our carbon footprint,” Nary said. “It’s a welcome change that has been a long time coming.”

— — Edited by Dylan Sands