Zoning Promises Subway Accessibility, But Who Gains?

Robert Acevedo, 58, has been living with spinocerebellar ataxia his entire life. He used to be able to walk until his condition deteriorated in 2008. He transitioned to using a cane, then a walker, and three years ago, he became a wheelchair user.

Acevedo has not been a frequent user of the subway system because of how inaccessible it is. He lives on 27th Street, which is supposed to be one of the most convenient locations for commuters, but none of the stations that are nearest to him are accessible. To use the subway, Acevedo has to travel up to 34 St-Herald Square Station.

“When I’m taking the subway, I pray–pray that the elevator is working,” said Acevedo. “I pray also that there isn't stuff on the ground in the elevator.”

Like Acevedo, other disabled commuters in New York City are choosing not to use the subway system because of systemic issues that lead to widespread elevator outages. The poor availability of third-party elevators has been brought up by disability rights advocates as a significant barrier to subway accessibility.

Our analysis showed a substantially higher downtime of privately run elevators compared to elevators managed by the MTA, with 66 hours on average per maintenance activity for privately run elevators and 5 hours on average for MTA run elevators. The privately run elevators are installed and managed by private entities as part of the zoning for accessibility program.

Zoning for accessibility in New York City is a set of regulations and guidelines that ensure buildings and public spaces are accessible to all individuals, including those with disabilities. When a private entity, such as a business or a developer, collaborates with programs like those run by the MTA to make their premises more accessible, they can realize a range of benefits, including financial incentives, such as tax credits or grants.

Disability rights advocates, such as Jean Ryan, a long-time activist and wheelchair user, says that many developers add elevators to allow subway access in order to get the financial perks but do not do regular maintenance on them after receiving the perks.

“Some private entities don’t maintain them at all and those elevators tend to be the worst,” Ryan said.

The MTA declined to comment on this story.

Key stations are crucial

Accessibility at key stations, which have high foot traffic and are places where passengers change stations, is crucial to providing reliable commutes for the disabled.

For people with disabilities to travel smoothly, working elevators are essential at the start, end, and sometimes in the middle of their journey — spanning from the platform to the mezzanine and subsequently to the station level. If they encounter an unexpected broken down elevator in their journey, they have to get back on the train to travel to another station with a working elevator, which might be miles away from their destination

Michael Ring, who is also part of the Disabled in Action Group, pointed out how difficult it is for the disabled to live normal lives if they cannot take the subway.

“Someone who goes to work and wants to have a job where they have to travel five days a week, they're going to need five elevators one way to get somewhere.”

“Two to the mezzanine, two to the platform; maybe you change somewhere, that adds at least one elevator ride,” he said. “Then they have to repeat it on the way home. That's 50 elevator rides a week.”

“You gotta go to work five days a week, and if one of the elevators does not work, you might not have a job,” Ring said.

Subway elevators are, on average, unavailable for use for 28 hours in a given month across stations in Manhattan, Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. According to a city council report from earlier this year, on average, 34 elevators out of the 350 subway elevators in the city were out of service at any given time in January 2023.

“I rode the subways for 25 years. I was not disabled. Then when I started to become disabled, I continued to use the subways, but with huge difficulty.” Ryan said.

Ryan, who also sits on the MTA Paratransit Advisory Committee added, “In fact, at one point, I was overshooting my neighborhood and going to a different neighborhood on the subway because my neighborhood has zero elevators.”

Eventually, Ryan said, traveling to the nearest station with an elevator became too hard.

“I just could not do it anymore.”

In a federal lawsuit, one of the plaintiffs and wheelchair user, Sasha Blair-Goldensohn, alleged that he routinely encountered elevator outages without any notice at all. In some cases, he was trapped on platforms and could not safely exit stations and had to rely on strangers to physically lift him up or down stairs in order to exit the station. Blair-Goldensohn also claimed that every time this happened, MTA staff was either unable or unwilling to assist him to exit the station safely.

The MTA uses an automated monitoring system called Lift-Net to monitor elevator outages and relay entrapment of passengers to maintenance staff. A 2011 report by the MTA’s Office of the Inspector General found discrepancies in outages reported by the system and a lack of training of maintenance personnel in reporting and resolving outages. During our reporting, we made a Freedom of Information Act request for the latest data from the Lift-Net system. Our analysis of private and public elevators uses data from this FOIA request.

Elevators are for everyone

In an article, Angela Glover Blackwell, a renowned civil rights advocate talked about the so-called Curb-Cut Effect. The "curb-cut effect" refers to the broader positive impact that accommodations or improvements designed for specific groups of people with disabilities can have on society as a whole. The term originated from the idea of curb cuts, which are sloped ramps cut into sidewalks to assist wheelchair users in crossing streets.

Curb cuts not only help people in wheelchairs but also benefit parents with strollers, delivery workers with carts, and individuals pulling luggage.

In 2019, 22-year-old Malaysia Goodson died after she fell down the staircase of a Manhattan subway station while carrying her stroller. Her one-year-old child survived the fall. Activists say that a functioning elevator would have prevented her death. Ryan, talking about the lack of working elevators said, “It is really frustrating, and anxiety producing.”

“And you know, all kinds of people need this. They needed to go to work and come home. They needed to go to the doctor, they needed to go see friends and family and, you know, live their lives!”