Good sense derailed

The decision was in and, while he wasn't surprised, Coleman Flaherty couldn't help being disappointed.

''I've found over my life that common sense isn't as common as you might think," he sighed.

Flaherty is a mainstay of the Columbia-Savin Hill Civic Association. He had just received word yesterday that the Savin Hill MBTA station in Dorchester will remain closed until late summer, even though its $7 million reconstruction is nearly complete.

That's correct: A nearly finished station is going to stay closed anyway.

A reopening had been scheduled for May 7, but it will have to wait. The state's Architectural Access Board voted 7-0 this week that the station cannot open until the elevators and escalators required for handicapped access are installed. The new projected opening is July 31.

There is no difference of opinion in Savin Hill about the need for full access to the station. One of the many reasons its decrepit predecessor was demolished last summer was its lack of such access. The new station, which was redesigned with considerable community input, will far exceed the legal requirements for access, with two elevators and an escalator. In the old station, anyone who couldn't climb stairs was out of luck.

''It's not just disabled people; there are also a lot of old folks in the neighborhood, and it's hard for some people to navigate those stairs," Flaherty said. ''I feel like the community's been held hostage."

However, the notion that 1,200 able-bodied riders a day can't use the station while the elevators and escalator are installed is mind-boggling. How does refusing to open the station help the disabled community, which won't be able to use it until July either way?

Technically, the board refused to grant a variance, deciding only that the station had to comply with the law. An offer to run shuttle buses for the disabled from Savin Hill to the JFK/UMass station was summarily dismissed.

Flaherty believes that the MBTA's spotty record of handicapped access was a factor in the decision. Simply put, the board may have felt that the MBTA couldn't be counted on to do the right thing in a timely fashion once it got the permit it was looking for.

''I really don't think the decision really had much to do with the Savin Hill area," Flaherty said. ''The decision was about the MBTA. That was just the club they used."

The MBTA argued that it was not cost-efficient to continue to run vans between Savin Hill and the next closest station, an argument the board rejected. Any appeal of the decision would go to the Architectural Access Board, making it a long shot at best.

The MBTA is probably partly to blame for this mess. The reason the whole building isn't going to be finished at the same time, they say, is because of delays in delivering steel.

Weather, they say, was also a factor. Bad weather might have been predictable, with the bulk of the construction taking place in the winter.

The sad thing is, this would seem like the kind of issue that lends itself to compromise.

The Architectural Access Board could have allowed the station to open temporarily, pending completion of the elevators. The MBTA could have come up with a better idea than the demeaning plan of vans for the disabled. Almost anything would have been better than leaving more than 1,000 people a day without service, with a finished building sitting vacant overlooking Interstate 93.

''There should be a way to satisfy everyone except the most unreasonable people," said Bill Walczak, director of the Codman Square Health Center and a Savin Hill resident. ''Overwhelmingly, people in the community support the rights of the handicapped, but they shouldn't be punished because the state doesn't have its elevator. I hope reasonable minds prevail."

This week, they didn't. Good government often comes down to compromise. In this case, inflexibility prevailed.

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.