The
Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has been gradually adding
disabled access to its key stations since the 1980s, though large portions of the MTA's transit system are still inaccessible. According to the MTA: :In improving services to individuals with disabilities, the MTA identified stations and facilities where compliance with the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) would benefit the most people, analyzing such factors as high ridership, transfer points, and service to major areas of activity. These stations were given priority in our station-renovation program. We are continuing to expand accessibility features to more and more locations. According to the MTA, fully accessible stations have: • elevators or ramps • accessible
OMNY Vending Machines • telephones at an accessible height with volume control, and
text telephones (TTYs) In 1980, the MTA Board voted to ignore the rule in spite of threats from the federal government that the agency would forfeit federal funding. Work at ten station renovation projects underway were placed on hold, and work at 78 others were shelved by the MTA, which feared that work would again be halted by the courts. Following the decision, the MTA asked the
New York State Legislature to exempt the agency from the law requiring transportation be accessible to people with disabilities. MTA Chairman
Richard Ravitch said that "the costs of station accessibility are enormous and the benefits illusory", arguing that few people would use the elevators, and noting that it would cost $1 million to make each station accessible, and the high cost of maintenance and security requirements. The MTA had offered the EPVA to set up an on-request paratransit service, which the group rejected, while the EPVA offered to make 27 key stations accessible, including , ,
Atlantic Avenue, , and , which was rejected by the MTA. In December 1983,
State Senate Minority Leader
Manfred Ohrenstein proposed legislation that would make 27 key stations accessible and provide funding for a
paratransit service, allowing renovations at the 88 stations to commence. Following the announcement, the MTA entertained installing elevators at a limited number of stations being renovated for the first time. Senator Ohrenstein estimated that it would cost $25 to 35 million to make the 27 stations accessible, and cost $55 million per year for the paratransit service. $30 million of the cost for paratransit service would be borne by Transit Authority revenues, $7 million would come from fares, and the remainder would come from third party payments like
Medicare and
Medicaid. The proposed legislation listed ten stations in
Manhattan, four in
The Bronx, seven in
Brooklyn, and six in
Queens. The bill also would have required half of buses to be equipped with wheelchair lifts, and created a 15-member Handicapped Transportation Board to oversee the paratransit system. In March 1984, the MTA, the office of Governor
Mario Cuomo, and advocates for disabled people began working on an agreement to permit the agency to begin work on it subway station modernization program. On June 21, 1984, Mayor
Ed Koch blocked an agreement that had been reached in principle to resolve the impasse. The agreement would have required the MTA to spend $5 million a year over eight years to make about 40 stations accessible and equipped every bus on the system with wheelchair lifts within fifteen years. He opposed making stations accessible, writing, "I have concluded that it is simply wrong to spend $50 million in the next eight years—and ultimately more—in putting elevators in the subways." In June 1984, Governor Cuomo and the leaders of the State Assembly and State Senate reached a settlement agreement in spite of Mayor Koch's objections. The agreement amended the
New York State Transportation and Building Laws to require the MTA to install elevators in 54 stations, of which 38 were designated in the legislation, while eight were to be chosen by the MTA, with the remaining eight to be chosen by a new 11-member New York City Transportation Disabled Committee. The MTA would be required to spend $5 million a year over eight years to make station accessible and to equip 65 percent of buses wheelchair lifts. At least eight stations had to become accessible within five years of when the legislation took effect. The New York City Transportation Disabled Committee would develop a plan for a pilot paratransit service within 210 days. The service would have a $5 million annual budget. The legislation was signed into law by Governor Cuomo on July 23, 1984, and the MTA Board approved a resolution in agreement with the legislation on July 25, 1984. A settlement agreement was approved on September 24, 1984, allowing the MTA to start work renovating 88 subway stations. As late as 1988, prior to the opening of the
Archer Avenue lines, there were still only four wheelchair-accessible stations in the subway system. Three of them were ground-level stations at
Canarsie–Rockaway Parkway,
Middle Village–Metropolitan Avenue, and
Rockaway Park–Beach 116th Street; the other was the
World Trade Center station in Lower Manhattan.
1990s and 2000s On July 26, 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was signed into law, requiring all transit systems to making their services and facilities fully accessible to people with disabilities. A provision of the legislation required all transit agencies to submit a key station plan to the FTA by July 26, 1992. As part of the plan, agencies were required to include the methodology they used to select key stations and a timeline for the completion of the accessibility improvements. Though stations were required to be made accessible by July 1993, transit agencies were granted permission to extend the deadline by as many as thirty years. As part of New York City Transit's key station plan, 54 stations were to be made ADA-accessible by 2010. The MTA created the New York City Transit ADA Compliance Coordination Committee (CCC) in June 1992. The committee works to coordinate the MTA's accessibility plan, as well as reaches out to disabled MTA riders. Shortly after this modification,
66th Street–Lincoln Center () and
Prospect Park–Brighton () were added to the list of 91 stations. There were also three options for modifying the list of 91 stations. They included adding
Broadway–Lafayette Street () and
Bleecker Street (); replacing
Broad Street with
Chambers Street (both served by the ) and
Church Avenue with
Kings Highway (both served by the ); or modifying dates for several key stations. The public supported all of these options.
2010s In October 2010, the United Spinal Association filed a class action lawsuit against the MTA for not making the
Dyckman Street station accessible as part of a station renovation project, arguing that the agency violated the ADA by not allocating twenty percent of the project budget to improving access to disabled people. The MTA had not planned to make the station accessible due to a lack of funds, and as it was not identified by the agency as a key station. In July 2010, the United Spinal Association announced that it had reached a settlement with the MTA to install an elevator to the southbound platform of the station by 2014. An elevator was not installed to the northbound platform as the MTA argued that doing so was not feasible due to the layout of the landmarked station. As part of the 2015–2019 Capital Program, $300 million was allocated to enhance station access and provide ADA-accessibility at fifteen stations chosen by the city. Four stations were chosen in January 2018:
170th Street (),
Broadway Junction ( platforms),
Livonia Avenue (), and
Queensboro Plaza (). Four more stations were being evaluated. These stations were the platforms at Broadway Junction, as well as
Union Street (),
Vernon Boulevard–Jackson Avenue (), and
East Broadway (). In April 2018, the MTA added an ADA-accessibility project at
Westchester Square–East Tremont Avenue () as part of the 2015–2019 Capital Program. The MTA hired Stantec in February 2018 to determine the feasibility and cost of making all subway stations ADA-accessible. The study Stantec completed was used to determine which stations would be made accessible the agency's 2020–2024 Capital Program. It found that it would be impossible to make the southbound platform at the
14th Street–Union Square station on the
IRT Lexington Avenue Line accessible due to the station's curvature. In addition, making the
Court Street station was not found to be feasible due to the significant amount of conduits that would have to be rerouted. In 2018, as part of the MTA's
Fast Forward program to improve subway and bus service, an Executive Accessibility Advisor was hired at
New York City Transit Authority chief Andy Byford's request, reporting directly to Byford. However, the MTA's efforts were still seen as inadequate. After a woman died in January 2019 from falling down a staircase at
Seventh Avenue, a station with no elevators, officials criticized the MTA for not adding enough elevators, and one advocacy group released an unofficial map of stations that should receive accessibility upgrades. In April 2019, the Suffolk Independent Living Organization filed a class action lawsuit against the MTA for not making the
Amityville,
Copiague, and
Lindenhurst stations on the Long Island Rail Road accessible after the agency spent $5 million renovating escalators at the stations from 2015 to 2016. The MTA reached a settlement with the Suffolk Independent Living Organization on July 10, 2020, agreeing to make the three stations fully compliant with the ADA, including the installation of elevators. Work on these projects was to be completed by June 2023, with funding to come out of the MTA's 2020–2024 Capital Program. The elevators at these stations were finished in 2024.
2020s to present , ADA-accessibility projects are expected to be started or completed at 51 stations as part of the 2020–2024 Capital Program. This would allow one of every two to four stations on every line to be accessible, so that all non-accessible stops would be a maximum of two stops from an accessible station. In June 2018, it was announced that the
Sixth Avenue station on the would receive elevators following the
14th Street Tunnel shutdown in 2019–2020. As part of the plan to add fifty ADA-accessible stations, the MTA surveyed the 345 non-accessible stations for possible ADA-accessibility. However, in the draft 2020–2024 Capital Program released in September 2019, it was indicated that 66 stations might receive ADA improvements. Plans for ADA access at another 20 stations were announced that December. The news outlet
The City did an analysis of the 2020–2024 Capital Program, and found that the cost of replacing nineteen elevators in the system in had doubled from $69 million to $134 million. The MTA established a "chief accessibility officer" position in 2021 to oversee its accessibility initiatives. In December 2020, the MTA Board voted to approve a $149 million contract to install seventeen elevators to make seven subway stations and one Staten Island Railway station accessible, and a fifteen-year $8 million contract for elevator maintenance. The MTA used Federal grant money for the
Penn Station Access project that would have otherwise expired. The initial cost to make these eight stations accessible was $581 million. The cost of the project was reduced by planning to make the stations accessible without constructing machine rooms, which require additional excavation and underground utility relocation. In January 2022, the MTA added a project to make
Massapequa Park station on the LIRR ADA-accessible to the 2020–2024 Capital Program. The
New York City Council approved ZFA in October 2021, and the first project under the ZFA program was announced two months later. In June 2022, as part of a settlement for two class-action lawsuits, the MTA proposed making 95 percent of subway and Staten Island Railway stations accessible by 2055. This would require installing elevators and ramps at 81 stations before 2025; at another 85 stations between 2025 and 2035; and at 90 additional stations in each of the next two decades. Due to technical limitations, about five percent of stations could not accommodate either elevators or ramps. Also in 2021, the MTA announced it would install wide-aisle fare gates at five subway stations. After partnering with Cubic to design the fare gates, the MTA would replace existing equipment at select locations in order to make station access easier for wheelchair users and passengers with other wheeled devices such as walkers, strollers, and suitcases. Two years later, as part of a plan to improve bike access in the subway, the agency announced the five stations planned to receive the new fare gates:
Astoria Boulevard and
Sutphin Boulevard/JFK Airport in
Queens,
Bowling Green and
34th Street-Penn Station in
Manhattan, and
Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center in
Brooklyn. As part of this primarily cyclist-focused initiative, the MTA also agreed to consider providing larger elevator cab sizes and elevator redundancy at stations. and the contract was awarded the next month. Accessibility upgrades to three Metro-North stations began in June 2025. The MTA planned to fund several accessibility projects with revenue from
congestion pricing in New York City, which was implemented in 2025. In August 2024, a state judge indicated that the city government might have to pay for platform modifications at several stations, to reduce gaps between the train and platform. which would cost $7.1 billion in total. According to
Curbed, the high costs of these upgrades were attributed in part to tangentially related projects such as equipment upgrades, since the elevators themselves only cost $5 million apiece on average. In July 2025, the MTA announced that it would install elevators at another 12 stations.
Inaccessibility The MTA has been criticized for its inaccessibility, particularly in the
New York City Subway. As of September 2021, just of the city's 472 subway stations were accessible, among the lowest percentages of any major transit system in the world. In the 2010s, there were some lines where two accessible stations are separated by ten or more non-accessible stops. Even at some stations that are otherwise ADA-accessible (such as
59th Street–Columbus Circle and
Times Square–42nd Street), the gaps between the trains and platforms exceed the maximum gap allowed by the ADA. Some places such as
Woodlawn,
South Brooklyn, and
Stapleton, as well as neighborhoods with large elderly or young populations, do not have any accessible stations. Between 2017 and 2023, the subway system's elevators were operational more than 95% of the time on average, but disability-rights advocates said in 2023 that 25 elevators broke down every day on average. In contrast to the MTA, all but one of Boston's
MBTA subway stations are accessible, the
Chicago "L" plans all stations to be accessible in the 2030s, the
Toronto subway was to be fully accessible by 2025, and
Montreal Metro plans all stations to be accessible by 2038. Both the Boston and Chicago systems are as old or older than the New York City Subway, though all of these systems have fewer stations than the New York City Subway. Newer systems like the
Washington Metro and
Bay Area Rapid Transit have been fully accessible from their opening in the 1970s.
Corridors and major stations Many transfer stations, such as Broadway Junction on the and
Delancey Street/Essex Street on the are not wheelchair-accessible, making it harder to travel between different parts of the city. The
Rockaway Park Shuttle, which typically runs from to , has only one accessible station. Several stations also only contain elevators leading from street level to their respective mezzanines. Additionally, some stations on the LIRR are not accessible. Several stations that serve major sports venues in the metropolitan area also have little to no accessibility; the
Mets–Willets Point subway station, located adjacent to
Citi Field (home of the
New York Mets), is only accessible through a ramp at a southern side platform, which are only open during special events. Similarly, the connecting
Long Island Rail Road station of the same name is not ADA-compliant, nor is the
LIRR station serving
Belmont Park. The
Aqueduct Racetrack subway station, serving the
eponymous racetrack in
South Ozone Park, was inaccessible until 2013, following a two-year renovation project at the behest of
Resorts World Casino, which opened near the racetrack in 2011. Although all
New York City buses are accessible, transfers between bus routes, as well as the bus trips themselves, are usually cumbersome because buses run at a much lower frequency than the subway does.
Legal issues As per the ADA, if a station is significantly modified, at least 20% of the renovation's cost must be spent on ADA improvements, but this is not always the case in the New York City Subway system. None of the stations being renovated under the
Enhanced Station Initiative, which began in 2017, are proposed to include elevators, except for the stations already equipped with them (e.g.
Hunts Point Avenue). There have been several lawsuits over this issue. What is believed to have likely been the first such suit was based on state law and was filed in 1979 by the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association. In 2011, the MTA added a single elevator at the
Dyckman Street station () after a lawsuit by the
United Spinal Association midway during the station's renovation. In 2016, the MTA was sued by another disability rights group for not installing an elevator at the
Middletown Road station during a 2014 renovation. Similarly, in 2017, disability rights groups filed a
class-action suit against the MTA because the subway in general was inaccessible, which violated both state and federal laws; The federal government sued the MTA in March 2018 over a lack of elevators at Middletown Road and the Enhanced Station Initiative stops. In March 2019, federal district judge
Edgardo Ramos ruled that all subway station renovations that "affect the station's usability" must include upgrades to make the station fully accessible unless it is deemed unfeasible to do so. In February 2021, the state-court case reached
class-action status with over 500,000 plaintiffs; the class-action lawsuit was resolved as part of the June 2022 settlement with the MTA. ==Station count==