Dozens of advocates for accessibility in transit rallied outside MTA headquarters in Lower Manhattan on Monday as part of their ongoing push for better subway elevator maintenance.
The protest, led by members from Disabled In Action Metropolitan NY and the Elevator Action Group, has a nearly eight-year federal lawsuit against the MTA to ensure elevator maintenance throughout the system in order to bring the subways fully into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
Although they have an agreement with the MTA to make 95% of the subway system accessible by 2055, the group is fed up with the fact that the elevators at several stops are not working.
“You miss your meetings. You miss seeing your friends. You’re like an hour late. It’s horribly inefficient,” said Jean Ryan, one of the protesters outside the MTA’s headquarters on March 24 ahead of committee meetings. “And it’s not just people in wheelchairs who are affected. There’s plenty of people who have arthritis, are tired, who have a little kid with them.”
There are currently 391 elevators across the subway system, and at press time, 349 of them were working. MTA New York City Transit President Demetrius Crichlow pointed out that 97.6% of the elevators within the subway system are operational.
The MTA plans to add elevators to more subway stations in the 2025-29 Five-Year Capital Plan that the authority approved last year. State lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul are still negotiating whether to fund all or most of the $68.5 billion plan amid ongoing economic uncertainty.
“We’ve laid out 43 stations that we plan to make accessible in this next capital plan, and that is all in addition to the over 30 existing projects that we have right now, of new stations becoming accessible — which is in addition to the over 25 stations where we are actively replacing elevators and or escalators,” MTA Chief Accessibility Officer Quemuel Arroyo told amNewYork on March 24.
Even so, the few elevators out of service within the subway system make that stop inaccessible to persons with disabilities. The advocates who protested Monday want the MTA to ensure that all elevators are properly maintained and that they are quickly notified whenever one breaks down.
“We want the elevators to be maintained regularly,” Ryan said. “If they go out, we want to be notified right away. And we want them fixed as soon as possible.”
Jennifer Van Dyck of the Elevator Action Group added, “A broken elevator is a useless elevator.”
Arroyo, who has a disability himself, told amNewYork that he understood the group’s frustration but added that “anyone who’s been following this conversation will understand that the MTA is not wavering from our commitment to accessibility.”
“You know we are putting our money where our mouth is, doing five times more projects and investing five times more than any of the previous administration’s leadership team here at the MTA. And that includes looking at innovative ways for us to do projects better,” Arroyo said.
The launch of congestion pricing in January of this year will help the MTA finance accessibility improvements citywide, including at a number of stations this year.
