I'll post this here, if the discussion moves feel free to move this along with it.
It's kind of a recurring issue with the T which is both understandable on one level and absolutely infuriating on another. On the one hand, the MAAB's regulations and rulings on what accessibility modifications they need to make and what the triggers are for those upgrades isn't within the T's control, meaning that there are plenty of situations where that has the regrettable perverse outcome of leading them to not make useful improvements (and, indeed, to close parts of infrastructure like these stairs) because doing so would trigger the need to make the kind of upgrades they're not cued up to make. On the other hand, the T knows this is a thing, they either can't or won't properly provision for making these necessary upgrades, so you get situations where they have to keep these stairs closed, or they have to leave CR stations completely inaccessible, because they don't (for whatever reasons) have the budget to make the necessary changes on anything like a reasonable timetable, and they certainly don't show that they care about that fact. It's fine if the explanation is "we can't fix these, because the rules say we'd have to add an elevator, and we don't have the money to do that right now", but that's not a get out of jail free card, it's on them to get their act together and get the money, or at the very least to make it clear in their communications that they need more money from the politicians to do these things. "Not being the MTA" when it comes to things like station access and accessibility shouldn't be the standard; there's a clear "oh well" shrug here that doesn't sit well and shouldn't be acceptable, it's yet another symptom of the degree of institutional rot we're dealing with.