Sharon McLennon Wier was commuting to her job with the New York State Commission for the Blind on Sept. 10, 2015 when she fell onto the tracks at the Wall Street subway station.
Wier has a Ph.D. in counseling psychology and has been completely blind since she was 6 years old. She uses a white cane to navigate the world. The tactile domes--those yellow bumps along the edge of a subway platform--were an older, less effective design that failed to alert her.
“By the time I realized where I was, it was too late and I was on the track,” says Wier. “Luckily two guys jumped in before the train came and saved my life.”
Wier sustained multiple injuries from the fall, including broken bones in her back, leaving her with chronic pain that still affects her today. She says if there had been better tactile domes and platform doors, she could’ve avoided the entire painful event.
Wier has been working in the field of disability for 27 years and is currently the executive director of the Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York, or CIDNY. Disabled passengers of the MTA often contact CIDNY for help navigating a system that is frequently inaccessible to them.
“Not enough transit stations in New York City are accessible,” states the MTA website. “Out of 493 total subway and Staten Island Railway stations, there are currently 136 accessible stations (28 percent).”
In June 2022, CIDNY and other disability advocacy organizations reached a settlement with the MTA in a lawsuit over violations of the New York City Human Rights Law. The conditions of the settlement require the MTA to provide stair-free access at 95 percent of the currently inaccessible stations by 2055 and use almost 15 percent of capital funding for accessibility improvements.
New elevators have already been installed at several stations since the suit was settled. The MTA agreed in the settlement on a schedule to provide stair-free access at 85 more stations by 2035, and then 90 more stations every 10 years until 2055.
Another advocacy group that was involved in the lawsuit is Disabled in Action or DIA, headed by Jean Ryan. She has spinal stenosis, which causes chronic pain and difficulty walking, among other symptoms. She became involved with the group after the condition progressed to the point that she became fully dependent on a wheelchair or electric scooter.
Previously, she had relied on the subway for 25 years without hesitation.
But when Ryan was working and getting her master's at Hunter College in the 1990s, she had to go through an exhausting daily commute to the school and back.
She signed up for Access-A-Ride, the MTA’s door-to-door paratransit service for disabled passengers. But she was often told they didn’t have any available rides for her.
Ryan resorted to purchasing a second electric scooter to keep on campus and using crutches to take the subway there and back. She sought out as many elevators as she could find but often had no other option than to use the subway stairs with her crutches--an arduous ordeal.
Ryan joined Disabled in Action the same year they successfully sued the MTA for refusing to provide Access-A-Ride service to registered passengers. Since then, she says they have stopped outright denying rides, but passengers report being left stranded, waiting for hours, or deserted altogether.
Wier said most of CIDNY’s clients rely on paratransit and have to deal with the unreliable system.
“A trip that may take 20 to 30 minutes could take two hours or two and a half hours. You’re never on time,” said Wier, who frequently uses Access-A-Ride herself.
The MTA has also developed a new on-demand system for Access-A-Ride customers called E-Hail which provides more direct service through ride-share companies like Uber and Lyft.
“For those people that have appointments in multiple boroughs, it becomes very expensive because it's almost like paying for an Uber trip,” said Wier about the new option. “That's very expensive if you're on a fixed income, so most people are relegated to … the regular system.”
Disabled working-age people are more than three times as likely to be “financially vulnerable” than their non-disabled counterparts, according to recent research from the Financial Health Network. They define financial vulnerability as “a precarious financial state” consisting of “little or no emergency savings, high levels of debt, and insufficient income to meet month-to-month expenses.”
The expense of alternative transportation, in addition to medical expenses and other factors that contribute to financial hardship like the rising cost of groceries, can be a heavy burden for many disabled New Yorkers.
The recent approval of congestion pricing for drivers entering the Central Business District triggered a variety of passionate responses from disabled residents, their family members, and advocacy groups.
Many were concerned that the system would disproportionately affect those disabled residents who have to drive or be driven by someone else because they have no other reliably accessible options. However, MTA officials have assured there will be exemptions for “qualifying” vehicles transporting disabled people when it goes into effect this June.
Wier and Ryan are both in favor of congestion pricing because it will provide funds to improve the accessibility of public transportation, per the lawsuit settlement.
Wier also says that even if the MTA doesn’t generate the revenue it expects from congestion pricing, it would still have to find other avenues of funding the accessibility improvements.
The MTA has a history of financial missteps in previous projects to improve accessibility, like in 2019 when the transit authority announced that it had to nearly double the budget for the installation of 19 elevators.
These detrimental errors can contribute to significant delays. A perfect example is the Hunter College station that Ryan struggled to navigate in the 90s. There have been plans since 2008 to make the station fully accessible per the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, as part of a larger project to make 100 “key stations” fully ADA-compliant by 2020.
The project was slated to cost $67.2 million in the 2010-2014 Capital Program, but by 2019 that number had almost doubled, to $116 million. In January 2020, an update bumped the number up again, to $120 million.
The estimated cost as of February 2023 is $177 million, but the construction is finally scheduled for completion this December.
“I'm not worried because we're monitoring them,” Ryan says about the MTA adhering to the timeline and conditions of the recent settlement. “They have to explain if they're not keeping up with the schedule.”
Members of CIDNY, DIA, Rise & Resist Elevator Action Group, and other supporters meet to rally for ramps and elevators before the monthly committee meetings at the MTA headquarters on 2 Broadway.
“It doesn't matter. Rain, snow, cold, hot. We're here,” says Ryan.
I met Ryan in person on a sunny Monday morning in March for a rally before the committee meeting. She was in the center of about 15 protesters gathered in front of the entrance to the headquarters. People commuting to work strolled past or stopped to snap a picture as they exited the Bowling Green station across the street. The group displayed a long black banner with large rainbow text that read “ELEVATORS ARE FOR EVERYONE,” while chanting “What do we want? Working elevators! When do we want them? Now!”
The demonstrators also called for the settlement of another lawsuit filed alongside the successful case seven years ago. This ongoing suit alleges that the MTA doesn’t adequately maintain the available elevators nor provide reasonable accommodations to passengers affected by the outages.
Initially, the District Court ruled in favor of the MTA after the defense provided evidence that the elevators were in service over 95 percent of the time.
That decision was overturned by the Appeals Court in August 2024 after the plaintiffs provided evidence that the outage rate was significantly higher. They found that disabled passengers have up to a 50 percent chance of dealing with an outage when factoring in that they often rely on a minimum of four elevators in a single trip.
As he was walking into the building that morning with his coffee, the president of the New York City Transit Authority, Richard Davey, stopped to speak with the protestors, who voiced anger and frustration at the lack of accessible stations.
When they brought up the lawsuit for elevator maintenance, Davey said, “Most of it's been dismissed.”
When the demonstrators countered that this was not true, Davey responded that he’s been “an attorney for 25 years.”
Members of Rise and Resist Elevator Action Group, Jennifer Van Dyck and Jessica Murray, said the plaintiffs are committed to continuing the case, and that it’s misinformed to call it dismissed. “That's why we're out on the street. That's why we're here every month,” Van Dyck told Davey. “Your people in your office tell us it's over, and that's a lie. We have lawyers who are taking the case.
Later when the demonstrators debriefed about the impromptu confrontation, Ryan brought up another issue with the information coming from the MTA. “They're playing with stats,” she said.
Ryan noted that instead of focusing on the older elevators that are more likely to need maintenance, the outage rates they present are an overall percentage. In her opinion, she said, the inclusion of the brand-new elevators in the sample size makes the situation look better than it is.
Sasha Blair-Goldensohn, a native New Yorker and alumnus of Hunter College High School, is one of the plaintiffs in both the settled and ongoing suits. Blair-Goldensohn was walking to work through Central Park one morning in July 2009 when a rotten tree branch landed on him. Thankfully, a doctor who was jogging through the park found him and slowed the bleeding, saving his life. “I've been in a chair for 15 years now, and I had no idea before [my accident],” Blair-Goldensohn says of the MTA's inaccessibility.
When visiting a friend in Boston, Blair-Goldensohn realized the subway system there was far more wheelchair accessible than New York's. He did some research and found that a lawsuit settlement in 2006 required the city to make massive improvements to accessibility. The discovery inspired him to contact Disability Rights Advocates to assemble more plaintiffs and pursue legal action against the MTA.
Blair-Goldensohn was one of the protestors who confronted the MTA president that morning.
[Davey] “and all the people who work in here are human shields for the governor, who could sign that … case that we filed seven years ago, which is not asking for money,” he said after the heated conversation. “It's eminently plausible. It's not rocket science.”
Later that day, Davey led reporters from Pix 11 and Chanel 12 through a bus that is equipped with electronic screens showing passengers they are being recorded for a new initiative to deter crime on buses. I got on the bus with the other reporters and started to ask about his conversation with the demonstrators, but he immediately directed me to his press agent.
Blair-Goldensohn and Ryan say the MTA officials often will shift the blame. Ryan cites the disclaimer on the webpage where they announce elevator and escalator outages. “Some elevators and escalators in the New York City Transit system are managed and maintained by a third party, such as real estate developers,” it reads. “Since we don’t maintain these, back-in-service times for them are default estimates.”
In Ryan and Blair-Goldensohn's view, the MTA cannot deny responsibility just because they hired a third party. “If I get stuck in that station, it sure as hell is my problem,” says Blair-Goldensohn. Or as Ryan puts it: “It's not our problem to solve. It's our problem to experience.”
The 2023 city council report also notes that “equipment operated by third parties performed most poorly” and “information on third party operators and which equipment they operate is very hard to find.”
Further complicating the situation, the council found that when an elevator is out of service, it can be difficult to report, and the MTA fails to consistently update its website with planned outages.
Wheelchair users who encounter an unexpected outage at a station with only one elevator have to either reroute their trip to find an accessible path or call the fire department to be carried up the stairs, wrote Blair-Goldensohn in an op-ed for The New York Times.
Disability advocates say that improvements to accessibility are not only for them, but for everyone. One devastating illustration is what happened in 2019 to Malaysia Goodson. Goodson, a 22-year-old mom, was carrying a stroller holding her 1-year-old daughter when she fell down a flight of stairs. Her baby survived, but Goodson did not.
“My cousin should still be here,” said Malaysia Goodson’s cousin at one of the MTA Board Meetings later that year. She was sobbing, urgent. “Y’all have to do something fast, quick, before something like this happens again.”
Goodson’s death was preventable and illustrates “The Curb Cut Effect,” a phenomenon where accessibility features accommodate more than just the disabled people for whom they were designed.
Ramps and elevators make traveling safer for parents like Goodson, pregnant individuals, the elderly, people with suitcases, bikers, anyone moving large objects or equipment, and more.
“We have a lot of people aging,” says Wier. “We need to think about how do we have a city that becomes universal for everybody.”
The population of New Yorkers who are 60 years and over increased by 25 percent from 2010 to 2021, according to the latest annual plan summary from the New York City Department for The Aging.
The platform doors that Wier advocates could not have prevented not only her painful experience but also many deaths.
Between 2018 to 2022 there was a 25 percent increase in reported incidents of “people making contact with trains,” which encompasses falls, collisions, and suicides, resulting in 88 fatalities, according to data obtained by THE CITY.
Last October the MTA announced it was months behind on a project to install automatic platform doors at three stations: Times Square, 3rd Avenue, and Sutphin Boulevard/Archer Avenue. As with the elevator installations at Hunter College, the budget for this project has dramatically shot up since it was initially announced. This time it more than doubled, from $100 million to $254 million.
Instead, the MTA recently installed partial 4-foot-tall barriers at a select few stations. Some New Yorkers have critiqued the new yellow metal structures as not doing enough to address the issue.
The MTA has yet to respond to my email asking if the platform door project will still happen and how the agency will handle potential delays and budgetary issues with the installation of new elevators.
The agency also has not provided any comment on the latest hearing in the elevator maintenance case that occurred in May.
I met Blair-Goldensohn at 8:30 a.m. outside his apartment building in the Upper West Side to make it to the United States District Court downtown before the hearing’s 10 a.m. start. We had to leave early and set aside extra time for delays, a common reality for many disabled New Yorkers who use the MTA.
The nearest subway station isn’t wheelchair accessible, so we went to the next one. The closest station to the courthouse also isn’t accessible, so we got out at the next stop, Chambers Street.
But the elevator on the platform was out of service. So we had to “back-ride,” meaning we went to the next station where we could transfer back uptown to get to an elevator to the other platform.
We finally made it to the station’s upper level, where we need to find another elevator to the street. The first one we saw was undergoing maintenance. I assumed we’d have to turn back and find another station, but Blair-Goldensohn remembered there was a second elevator.
When we reached that elevator, there was a young couple waiting with their baby in a stroller. The pair was dressed up in what appeared to be handmade outfits. I complimented them, and Blair-Goldensohn asked where they were headed.
They smiled, and the woman said that they were on their way to get married.
“Annabelle, this is why you take the subway,” Blair-Goldensohn said once we got to the sidewalk. “It brings a tear to my eye.”
In the case, the plaintiffs proposed four accommodations: a shuttle service for passengers dealing with outages, redundant elevators to act as a backup for when one is out of service, timely announcements of outages, and training for MTA employees on how to assist disabled passengers dealing with an outage.
The attorney for the MTA called the proposal “not practical,” “ineffective,” and “wasteful.” He argued that there are already reasonable accommodations for passengers dealing with outages, citing the buses, back-riding, and Access-A-Ride.
Judge George B. Daniels had pointed questions for both sides. He wanted the MTA’s legal team to provide evidence that its current system does not cause significant delays.
“I can take a plane to California or I can take a horse,” Daniels told the lawyer for the MTA, emphasizing the need for a timely alternative for the outages. He also wanted the plaintiff’s attorney to provide evidence that their proposed accommodations would reduce delays and define exactly how long of a delay is “unreasonable.”
After the hearing, the plaintiffs gathered outside the building to debrief with their lawyer, who was confident the MTA’s legal team didn’t have enough to convince the judge to rule in their favor. Blair-Goldensohn took out the banner for the rallies from his backpack. Everyone gathered behind it, posing in hopeful celebration for a group photo.
Then they dispersed, to begin their long journeys home.
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