The Story of Public Transportation Accessibility: Lies, Procrastination, and Needs Still Not Being Met.

(A man attempting to haul his stroller up the long escalator at the Smith-9th Streets station on the F and G line. This station currently has no elevator accessibility, leading to moments like this. Photo courtesy of Curbed NY)

By Rory Grant

On July 26th, 1990, President George Bush signed The Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA for short, into law. For people living with disabilities, this was a monumental win. For so long they had fought for the ability to be given the same respect as non-disabled people, and now they were finally receiving the necessities they deserved. However, 33 years after Bush signed the ADA, the slow and steady fight against ableism continues. 

Unnecessarily, the MTA has promised that all of its stations will be accessible by 2050. People with disabilities should not have to wait 60 years to be able to ride the subway from their station with ease! My message is plain and simple, the MTA has inexcusably wasted money on projects far less important than just letting people ride subways, leading to overcrowded buses, lost revenue, and decreased ridership, and should instead focus on projects targeted on accessibility.

Let’s fast forward to just earlier this year, when on January 25th, 2023, the MTA opened Grand Central Madison, the project that finally connected the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central. I visited it 5 days later, and my oh my was it gorgeous, the lighting was beautiful, and it was calm and peaceful. It has a super long and scary escalator that goes 182 feet into the ground. The tracks were clean, and the marble on the pillars was shiny and fresh. But there’s one key detail I haven’t mentioned yet, the people. That’s because there weren’t any. In the hour and a half I spent at Grand Central Madison, I counted 24 passengers. Just 24. 24, that’s less than what you see in a museum and Grand Central Madison is an $11 BILLION project! In fact, over the course of the 15 years they spent building this monstrosity, they went $7 BILLION over budget! I saw more workers and security guards in that station just hanging out, all of whom were paid to be there, than actual passengers, the people who are supposed to pay for that service! It’s a catastrophic failure by the MTA.

(Grand Central Madison’s giant 182-foot-long escalator, photo courtesy of the MTA)

While the MTA does pay a lot for elevators, former Governor Cuomo said they cost $81 million per accessible station, at least building elevators would increase ridership at those stations. Grand Central Madison’s average of 50,000 weekday riders is only slightly higher than the BX12 bus route’s 40,000 daily riders! In fact, ridership data from a June 2023 Vice article suggests that there isn’t even increased LIRR ridership because of the project! Just think how much faster elevators could be put up with even half of that $11 billion!

And this is only one of the many blunders we’ve seen within the MTA. We are still sitting here waiting for another big MTA project, the Second Avenue Subway. Originally, we were supposed to have 7 stations done by 2025, yet it’s almost 2024 and we’ve got a grand total of 3. This is a promise the MTA has failed to keep, and this project has cost $2.5 billion per mile! Again, while the Upper East Side does need a subway, people there have bus travel they can rely on to get around. For people with disabilities, if they don’t have an elevator at their station, their only other options are a crowded bus that becomes even more squished upon their arrival or an expensive rideshare service like Uber or Lyft. And fewer people riding the subway means even less money for the MTA. The only reason our “mighty” subway is still alive is because the government has kept it that way. Like a box of Band-Aids, the state of New York is always there to stop the MTA’s bleed of debt, while still congratulating the baby steps the MTA takes toward economic stability

(A photo of the MTA’s planned map of phases 1 and 2 of the Second Avenue Subway Plan. Photo courtesy of the MTA) 

So we know that the MTA has had the money to put in elevators faster. We know they’ve instead chosen to spend it on big majestic stations, and we know that the state of New York has been there to back them up all along the way. But let’s take a minute to talk about where the elevators we do have are located. With just a teeny little scroll through the MTA’s accessibility access website, you can kind of tell how things are laid out and who gets the special treatment. Manhattan, the wealthiest of all the boroughs has the most elevators installed, with 47 accessible stations(out of 151 total stations), second place Brooklyn, has 33 accessible stations (out of 170 total stations), and then the gap only gets larger from there. The Bronx doesn’t even have half of what Brooklyn does, with a mere 16 accessible stations (out of 70 total stations), and Queens has only 21 (out of it’s 81 stations). And that’s the big theme, the elevators follow the money rather than the people who need it. Manhattan’s the wealthiest borough so of course it’s going to have the most accessible stations, but in Queens, the MTA has decided it’s more important to make the Aqueduct Racetrack station accessible, a station that only opens on horse racing days, to make that the priority instead of a station like Rockaway Avenue, located right next to NYCHA housing. They chose to prioritize elevators for gamblers over the lower income! The MTA needs to get its priorities in check and prioritize accessible stations for these lower-income communities. But as a general assumption in these other boroughs, if you don’t live right by stations where train lines intersect, your odds of an elevator are slim to none. It’s these disgusting practices that only make it harder on the people who have it hard already. 

On top of that, let’s look at accessibility outside the city. The Long Island Railroad Montauk line, a route that goes through the Hamptons, arguably the richest parts of the island, has 16 accessible stations! That one route for the wealthy has as many accessible stations as the entirety of the Bronx! Metro North’s Harlem line, an admittedly longer and more working-class train route has 25! More than Queens! The fact that wealthier suburban areas are getting accessibility before lower-income urban areas who need and use it more just isn’t right!

So let’s make the end goal plain and simple here. Force the MTA to put more of your tax money and your fare money into making sure everyone has elevator access, not just the magnificent monstrosities of stations in Manhattan. Tell your district representatives that these are the kinds of issues you want them to focus on, and have the people with power represent what you want. The MTA has board and committee meetings that you can attend where they “welcome public comments at our board and committee meetings from a range of New Yorkers”. You can also learn about organizations that are making a difference and do your research to learn even more about it. Everyone has the right to public transportation, that’s why it’s public! So why are people not able to ride (and heck PAY FOR) their transportation? Why should the people with the least amount of mobility have to go the furthest to get transportation? While only 20 percent of people who ride the train need the elevators, 100 percent of the people who ride the subway can use the elevators. It’s time for the MTA’s procrastination to stop. 2050 is too late, and with the MTA’s history of being behind schedule, it will likely be even later. So go out there and make your voice known. Let’s make sure everyone can catch their train.