NYC Public Transportation
While New York City is accessible in many ways, there are some areas where people like me are extremely limited, a big one being the subway trains and stations. The subway is probably the greatest source of transportation for New Yorkers. It is quick and overall just an efficient way to get around the city. But for people with disabilities, it can be quite a hassle.
For many people, riding a subway is just part of their daily routine. However, riding a subway is something I don’t get to do very often because they are so inaccessible. One of my moms will sometimes have to take the route beforehand to make sure that the gaps between the subway platform aren’t too wide for my wheelchair, and that the elevator status posted on the MTA website is accurate. There have been many times when a subway elevator has been out-of-service but the MTA website has said otherwise. Sometimes, elevators even shut down when we are inside of them. So, as you can probably tell, these elevators are pretty unreliable.
In November of 2018, my family and I (along with some family friends), were going to the New York City marathon. There were five people running the marathon to raise money for A Foundation Building Strength for Nemaline Myopathy research. We rode the subway there. The elevator at the station by our house was working, and the MTA website posted that the elevator at our destination was working as well. So, we got on the subway expecting this to be true. When we got to the stop by the marathon, we entered the elevator, but it just went up and down and the doors wouldn’t open to let us outside on the street level. We had to get back onto another subway, go to the next accessible stop, and walk all of the way back.
The distance between each subway stop can be up to a mile, so it definitely isn’t a quick walk back. This is just one example of when the subway elevators were unreliable.
So, you may be asking yourself why people with disabilities can’t just ride other public transportation. Well, the two main other possible options would be the city bus and Access-a-Ride. The city buses are just not very efficient, and are pretty slow considering all of the traffic and stops need to be made. A couple of Christmases ago, we took the city bus to go see the Rockefeller Christmas Tree, but because of all of the traffic along that avenue (as you can imagine), the ride back home took us about 2 and a half hours. If we could’ve just taken the subway home, we would’ve gotten home probably in a fifth of that time.
Access-a-Ride needs to be booked 24-48 hours in advance and is often quite late to pick the rider up. I once had a doctor’s appointment out in Long Island and we needed to take Access-a-Ride. Our appointment was at 9am and Access-a-Ride wanted to pick us up at 6am, 3 hours before our appointment when it would only take an hour to get there. I also used to take Access-a-Ride after school to get to dance classes and Kids Club at church, but the majority of the time, our ride would come incredibly late, and sometimes never even show.
In my English Language Arts class, we were assigned a project, which was to create an infographic on an issue that is important to you. I chose the issue of the lack of subway accessibility in New York City. I chose this issue because I think that often times, people overlook things like this and don’t recognize how things that you might consider a part of your daily life may be a big challenge for others. I am hoping for people to learn more about the lack of subway accessibility, and for MTA to make a change. I learned a lot while researching this issue, and wanted to share my findings with you all on this infographic I made for my class.
