Rachel Sadon
Ryan Honick and his service dog, Pico. (Courtesy of Ryan Honick)
Ryan Honick was skeptical that Metro would hear him when he stated loudly and clearly that the automatic faregates posed a danger to his service dog, Pico. Even when officials called to ask him about his experience, and the director of ADA policy followed up, he feared that WMATA was just paying lip service to a vocal customer. But, it turns out, Metro listened; the transit agency said today that they are reversing their policy and allowing passengers with service dogs to pass through the emergency gates.
It is a testament to one rider’s persistence, and the power of social media to amplify his voice, that exactly one week after he was furiously tweeting about his experiences at Eisenhower station, Honick received a letter stating that he would never have to go through that again.
Last Monday, Honick had requested that he and Pico be allowed to go through the emergency gate—as he always does when the pair rides Metro. The wide, ADA-compliant faregates shut too quickly after he wheels through, Honick says, and he fears they will hit Pico.
“The gate assumes it can shut once I’ve passed through, and my pup who is behind me gets scared. If that gate clips him—like it has—it can lead to phobias,” he explained. “And if he ends up being scared of the Metro, I can’t get to work.”
But the woman manning the station that night refused the request, telling Honick that she didn’t feel comfortable swinging open the manually operated exit and letting him through. She told him that she was simply following agency policy.
Only after a supervisor arrived nearly half an hour later, did they begrudgingly oblige. And while most station employees had let Honick wheel through the emergency gate in the past, he had two similar experiences the month prior and filed reports that seemed to go nowhere.
After Monday’s incident, a Metro spokeswoman indicated “without prejudging” their review, that the ADA gates should be accessible to customers who have service animals.
But Honick’s advocacy and Twitter complaints, along with a series of articles about his predicament that followed DCist’s original story, apparently didn’t fall on deaf ears. He received a letter from Metro’s director of ADA policy Christian Blake today informing him of a change in policy, which will apply to anyone who uses a service animal.
“As a result of your request, the informative conversations you shared with me, and Metro’ s follow-up investigation into the matter, I am pleased to inform you that Metro has established a safety accommodation standard operating procedure (SOP) to allow customers traveling with service animals to use the equipment gates to enter or exit the system upon request,” Blake wrote.
Metro spokesman Dan Stessel confirmed the policy change and said that station managers have been instructed to accede to requests to use the emergency gate from riders with service animals.
“Following our internal policy review, we have provided new guidance to Station Managers,” Stessel told DCist. “Specifically, customers with service animals who have a concern about using the accessible faregates can request to use the emergency gate, and the Station Manager will accommodate the request.”
