Construction workers put fences around the 36th Avenue subway station on the N and W lines in Astoria, Queens, last month. The stop will be closed until June while crews install LED lights, surveillance cameras, artwork and windscreens.
But there's something that won’t be installed there — elevators — that rattles disability rights advocates.
“The stations will be more beautiful, we’re being told, but people in wheelchairs still cannot access them,” state Sen. Michael Gianaris, a Democrat who represents Astoria.
Ultimately, more than 30 subway stations across the five boroughs will see substantial renovations through the Enhanced Station Initiative, a billion-dollar renovation scheme championed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
But even though these renovations involve the sort of substantial physical changes that would trigger compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, it appears that the MTA, which has the lowest rate of wheelchair accessibility of any heavy rail system in the country, has not revealed any plans to comply.
When asked if the MTA had considered whether the station renovations should include elevators, Chairman Joe Lhota told WNYC, “It’s a really good question.” After an uproar at the October MTA board of directors meeting, he said he had made a note to himself to take a look at the plans. During the next meeting, in November, Lhota promised his fellow board members that the staff would have an update on accessibility in January at the latest.
Lhota was quick to argue that the MTA is doing plenty to make its sprawling network more accessible.
“We have a whole separate program going on to enhance the number of stations that are available to people who are disabled," he told reporters. "They’re not necessarily the same group.”
MTA officials also argue that its entire bus fleet is wheelchair accessible and that it offers an on-demand paratransit system.
But many wheelchair users would rather use the subway, which is the fastest way to get around town. Plus, the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that 20 percent of the cost of any "substantial modification" on public transit systems be put towards making them more accessible to disabled commuters.
According to the Federal Transit Administration, whenever a portion of a facility is altered in a way that affects station usability, it must be made accessible to individuals with disabilities to the "maximum extent feasible."
The MTA has fallen afoul of the ADA before. In the 1990s, after a lawsuit, the agency agreed to make 100 "key stations" across the city wheelchair accessible, which is the program MTA Chairman Joe Lhota referred to while talking to reporters. The MTA is not yet finished: it has to outfit 14 more stations by the year 2020 to comply with the settlement. Elevators for another 19 stations have been funded and are expected to be installed at about the same time. Once those plans are complete, some 150 out of 472 stations — or 30 percent — will be accessible.
But that settlement was meant to establish the minimum compliance with the ADA, according to disability advocates. They argue that any major station project should include elevators, ramps or other accessibility features.
This premise was put to the test several years ago, when the MTA renovated the Dyckman Street Station on the No. 1 line in upper Manhattan but did not make any accommodations for disabled riders. After a lawsuit brought by the United Spinal Association, the agency agreed to install one elevator.
Not Getting Around
Wheelchair users say the lack of elevators is just one problem. Even those few that do exist in the subway network are unreliable.
Take Angel Martinez for example. A fall from a roof six years ago left him paralyzed from the waist down. It took him three years to start living his life again — and nearly three more years to get out his Metrocard. “Just being afraid to get stuck in the elevator, that’s what kept me [from the subway],” he said.
One evening last week, he wheels himself a full mile from Axis, a disability community center in Harlem, where he teaches boxing classes, to the nearest subway station with an elevator. Before he leaves, he checks an app on his phone that tells him it's working. But when he gets there, at 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, Martinez sees men inside the glass elevator wearing orange vests and white hardhats. He panics.
“Not now,” he groans. “This is what happens. They say it’s good and by the time you get there, look. In 15 minutes, anything can happen."
Martinez starts to worry about missing practice, but an MTA worker says the fix was quick. He pulls back a stream of yellow caution tape from in front of the elevator door and lets Martinez roll in.
Getting stuck in the elevator doesn't happen too often, fortunately. But wheelchair riders regularly get stuck in stations and are not able to get out because the elevators there are broken. According to an audit by New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, the MTA doesn’t accurately report outages and neglects to perform scheduled maintenance 80 percent of the time.
How They Do it Elsewhere
Chris Pangilinan is a wheelchair user who's lived in New York City for three years and says he's faced a broken elevator in the subway system 240 times. He and other disability rights advocates filed two more lawsuits against the MTA and other transportation agencies in April.
“It’s amazing that in 2017 it takes protest and public comment and a lawsuit to get them to do what’s standard practice across the country,” Pangilinan said.
Newer systems such as those in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., are completely accessible. Even Chicago and Boston, which have older systems, are about 70 percent accessible.
Additional elevators on the T in Boston were prompted by a $310 million settlement of a 2002 class action lawsuit. Not only did it result in more elevators, but the settlement also led to a shift in the mindset of transportation officials, prompting the transit agency there to check in with disabled advocates regular to see how to improve the system.
“I think people got an understanding that people with disabilities are a big part of our ridership and we need to make sure that we’re providing service to everybody,” says Rob Sampson, manager of the department of system-wide accessibility at the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
New York has almost four times as many stations as Boston, and adding elevators is expensive. But Sampson says the MBTA is saving money on repairs by keeping the elevators in good condition. The T is now considered a model—more accessible not only for the disabled, but also for older riders and people with strollers.
Working It
Angel Martinez is the only one of the ten members of his wheelchair basketball team who rides the subway regularly. It took him time to master navigating the system as a disabled person — but that’s true of basketball too.
He and other wheelchair basketball players take turns dribbling up and down the court at the 54th Street Recreation Center in Midtown.
“Dribbling the ball with the wheelchair so you don’t slide this way, slide that way — those are things that are more complicated,” Martinez said, panting from drills. “Not hard because you can make it happen, [but] you gotta work on it.”
Martinez says it’s the same for elevators on the subway: The MTA can make them happen, if only they’d work on it.