M.T.A. Pledges $5 Billion for Subway Elevators. Guess How Many.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/nyregion/mta-nyc-subway-elevators.html

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Across large swaths of New York City, it is impossible to take the subway without using the stairs. People who rely on wheelchairs are simply out of luck.

Some neighborhoods are worse than others. On the N train in Queens, there are seven stations in a row without a single elevator.

The transit agency has repeatedly come under fire and faced lawsuits for discriminating against disabled riders and for renovating 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 $5.5 billion, making it a top priority in the agency’s ambitious new spending plan.

One stop on the list is the Broadway station 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 elevated 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 recent 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 accessible, 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 Boston are accessible to people with disabilities.

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 argued that the agency could build more if it could do the work for less.

“Given that New York has so many inaccessible stations, the M.T.A. must figure out how to bring down the costs of individual projects,” said Colin Wright, a senior associate 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 frequently have to build new staircases, move utilities like gas and water lines and pay for real estate at the street level for the elevator.

“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 new elevators and two escalators. A new station in Chicago with four elevators cost $75 million.

In New York, a developer in Lower Manhattan agreed to build two subway elevators, 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 transit leaders have repeatedly thwarted attempts to build subway elevators. Richard Ravitch, the former M.T.A. chairman credited with turning around the subway in the 1980s, fought a push to add elevators, arguing 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 creating a separate paratransit system using vans to carry disabled riders where they needed to go. That system, known as Access-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 Brooklyn, 12 in Manhattan, six in the Bronx, six in Queens and three on the Staten Island Railway, a train line that serves the only borough 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 ridership.

“These 48 stations are a terrific first step and help get us closer than ever to achieving 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 riders, 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 working properly. Only about 94 percent of elevators were available in August, according to the transit agency. The rate is worse for escalators — 87 percent were working, the worst 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 improve stations has been criticized by disability advocates for failing to add any elevators.

The more than $800 million plan, known as the Enhanced Station Initiative, aimed to give more than two dozen stations a makeover, but none received elevators. Instead, the stations got new tiles and LED lighting — part of a focus by Mr. Cuomo on aesthetics.

“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 initiative as a way to “quickly rehabilitate stations that were in disrepair.” The governor’s commitment to accessibility was “clear and evident” through the state’s large contributions to the authority’s capital plans.

Subway officials also noted that the current 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 finally getting an elevator.

“Better late than never,” he said.

Disability advocates have pressed the transit agency for years to make the subway accessible. A lawsuit filed this year challenged the practice of renovating stations without installing elevators and argued that it violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, a 1990 federal law that prohibits 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 director of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled, said the capital plan was “real progress.” But he called on officials to commit to a legally binding agreement 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 Broadway 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.”