TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2019 A
NAcross large swaths of New York City, it is
impossible to take the subway without us-
ing the stairs. People who rely on wheel-
chairs are simply out of luck.
Some neighborhoods are worse than oth-
ers. On the N train in Queens, there are sev-
en stations in a row without a single eleva-
tor.
The transit agency has repeatedly come
under fire and faced lawsuits for discrimi-
nating against disabled riders and for reno-
vating stations without adding elevators.
Now subway officials are finally moving
to make the system more welcoming. They
plan to add elevators at 70 stations in the
next five years — a stunning pledge of $5.
billion, making it a top priority in the agen-
cy’s ambitious new spending plan.
One stop on the list is the Broadway sta-
tion in Astoria, Queens, a neighborhood that
has long been neglected when it comes to
accessibility and is one station on the N
train route without any elevators. Riders
must climb a long staircase to reach the ele-
vated platform at the century-old station.
“A lot of older people like myself can’t use
this subway,” Myro Tsouratakis said as he
walked by the station using a cane on a re-
cent morning. “I can still make it up the
steps, but it takes me a long time.”
Only about a quarter of New York City’s
472 subway stations are wheelchair acces-
sible, one of the lowest percentages of any
major transit system in the world. Other
transit systems in Washington and San
Francisco are fully accessible, and more
than half of the stations in Chicago and Bos-
ton are accessible to people with disabili-
ties.
A major obstacle in New York is the cost
of upgrading stations across such a vast and
aging system that first opened in 1904. The
Metropolitan Transportation Authority,
which oversees the city’s subway and
buses, estimates that accessibility fixes will
cost about $78 million per station.
Transit advocates have criticized the high
costs for installing elevators and have ar-
gued that the agency could build more if it
could do the work for less.
“Given that New York has so many inac-
cessible stations, the M.T.A. must figure out
how to bring down the costs of individual
projects,” said Colin Wright, a senior associ-
ate at TransitCenter, an advocacy group.
Each project can require adding two or
three elevators — one to take riders to the
mezzanine level where they pay the fare
and one each for the platforms heading in
opposite directions. Officials also fre-
quently have to build new staircases, move
utilities like gas and water lines and pay for
real estate at the street level for the eleva-
tor.
“The elevator installation is really only 20
percent of the overall cost,” Janno Lieber,
the authority’s head of capital construction,said in an interview.
Still, subway leaders have said they want
to bring down the costs and are looking to
other cities for lessons. The cost of building
elevators at train stations can vary widely
— one project in the Boston area cost about
$36 million and included three elevators
and two escalators. A new station in Chi-
cago with four elevators cost $75 million.
In New York, a developer in Lower Man-
hattan agreed to build two subway eleva-
tors, at a cost of about $10 million each, in
exchange for being given permission to
build a larger building.
Over the years, elected officials and tran-
sit leaders have repeatedly thwarted at-
tempts to build subway elevators. Richard
Ravitch, the former M.T.A. chairman cred-
ited with turning around the subway in the
1980s, fought a push to add elevators, argu-
ing that the costs would be “enormous and
the benefits illusory.”
Edward I. Koch, the popular New York
City mayor who died more than six years
ago, blocked a deal to add elevators in 1984.
Mr. Ravitch and Mr. Koch favored creat-
ing a separate paratransit system using
vans to carry disabled riders where they
needed to go. That system, known as Ac-
cess-A-Ride, began in 1990, but has been
plagued by problems, including long waits,poor service and high costs.
The transit agency recently released a
list of the 48 stations where it wants to
tackle elevators first, including 21 in Brook-
lyn, 12 in Manhattan, six in the Bronx, six in
Queens and three on the Staten Island Rail-
way, a train line that serves the only bor-
ough the subway never reached.
Subway leaders said the goal was that no
rider would be farther than two stops from
an accessible station. They also prioritized
transfer stations and those with high rider-
ship.
“These 48 stations are a terrific first step
and help get us closer than ever to achiev-
ing systemwide accessibility that all New
Yorkers deserve,” Andy Byford, the subway
leader, said.
Mr. Byford has made accessibility a top
priority since he took over a year and a half
ago. He hired Alex Elegudin, a wheelchair
user, as the subway’s first accessibility
chief. Mr. Byford has met with disabled rid-
ers, including joining a 6-year-old boy in a
wheelchair for a tour of a bus depot.
But even when a station has an elevator,
workers have struggled to keep them work-
ing properly. Only about 94 percent of eleva-
tors were available in August, according to
the transit agency. The rate is worse for es-
calators — 87 percent were working, theworst performance in years.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat who
controls the subway, has recently started to
talk about making accessibility a priority.
But one of the governor’s key plans to im-
prove stations has been criticized by dis-
ability advocates for failing to add any ele-
vators.
The more than $800 million plan, known
as the Enhanced Station Initiative, aimed to
give more than two dozen stations a make-
over, but none received elevators. Instead,
the stations got new tiles and LED lighting
— part of a focus by Mr. Cuomo on aesthet-
ics.
“It was a missed opportunity,” Mr. Wright
said. “Those renovations signaled to riders
with disabilities that they didn’t matter.”
A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, Patrick
Muncie, defended the enhanced station ini-
tiative as a way to “quickly rehabilitate sta-
tions that were in disrepair.” The governor’s
commitment to accessibility was “clear and
evident” through the state’s large contribu-
tions to the authority’s capital plans.
Subway officials also noted that the cur-
rent capital plan, which runs from 2015 to
2019, includes installing 59 elevators at 25
stations.
The Broadway station in Astoria, which
was part of Mr. Cuomo’s enhancement plan,
was closed for months and reopened with
sleek new benches and computer screens.
“They remodeled it and still they didn’t
put an elevator here,” Marcia Cole said as
she walked by the station using a cane.
“That’s crazy.”
Andreas Kolmbaroulis, who also uses a
cane, said he was glad the station was fi-
nally getting an elevator.
“Better late than never,” he said.
Disability advocates have pressed the
transit agency for years to make the sub-
way accessible. A lawsuit filed this year
challenged the practice of renovating sta-
tions without installing elevators and ar-
gued that it violated the Americans with
Disabilities Act, a 1990 federal law that pro-
hibits discrimination against people with
disabilities.
Subway officials say that it is too difficult
to install elevators at some stations because
of technical challenges.
Joseph G. Rappaport, the executive di-
rector of the Brooklyn Center for Independ-
ence of the Disabled, said the capital plan
was “real progress.” But he called on offi-
cials to commit to a legally binding agree-
ment to make sure they follow through on
their promises.
“That’s the only way to ensure that this
really happens,” he said. “You don’t know
who is going to be Andy Byford’s successor.”
Parents with young children have also
drawn attention to the elevator problem.
Catherine Schoenfeld, a teacher who lives
in Astoria, said she had avoided the Broad-
way station since her newborn son arrived.
It is too difficult lugging his stroller up the
stairs.
“I’m just going to have to get comfortable
carrying the whole thing up the steps,” she
said as she pushed her son in a stroller and
wondered when the repairs would be done.
“He’ll probably be walking,” she said, “by
the time they’re finished.”The Broadway station in Astoria, Queens, is one of many stations on the N train route that do not have an elevator. Riders must climb a long staircase to reach the platform at the century-old station.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARIAN CARRASQUERO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESA $5.5 Billion Price Tag
To Construct Elevators
At 70 Subway Stations
Riders Say M.T.A. Plan Is Long Overdue
By EMMA G. FITZSIMMONS
and REBECCA LIEBSONConstruction work is underway at the Astoria Boulevard station in Queens. Only
about a quarter of New York City’s 472 subway stations are wheelchair accessible.‘Those renovations signaled
to riders with disabilities
that they didn’t matter.’
Leaders said the goal was
that no rider would be
farther than two stops
from an accessible station.