A group of disability advocates are suing the MTA, arguing the gaps between trains and the subway platforms pose dangerous conditions for elderly and disabled riders.
The lawsuit, which was filed by accessibility rights advocates as far back as in 2022, alleges the MTA, which is run by New York City, violates the city’s Human Rights Law by failing to close hundreds of “excessive” spaces between subway trains and platforms that make the system “hazardous” for disabled and elderly riders.
Two years ago, the agency made an agreement through a separate lawsuit to make 95% of its 472 stations accessible by 2055, after continuously struggling to make the subway system compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Currently, just 147 stations, or 31%, have ramps or elevators, according to the MTA, which announced it would hold off on work to make 23 more stations accessible earlier this summer as a result of Hochul’s pause of congestion pricing. According to the advocates, despite the 2022 lawsuit conditions were never remedied.
The Americans With Disabilities Act deems a platform gap “excessive” if there’s a vertical space more than 2 inches high or a horizontal one that’s more than 4 inches wide.
“I mind the gap,” Jacqueline Goldenberg, 80, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, told Gothamist, referencing a familiar phrase on the London Underground, where riders are famously warned of wide spaces between the Tube’s platforms and trains.
“There’s a whole range of solutions, from as simple as a steel plate, a little bit of wood, a little bit of concrete, that can just make the city infinitely more accessible for those who genuinely need the subway to get around,” said Alex Peacocke, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs. “The idea is to eliminate the gaps where they appear and where they’re worst.”
The lawsuit cites a decade-old report that found the MTA deemed 91 stations with wide platform gaps “accessible” because they had elevators, adding gaps have still not been addressed.
“A person with a mobility or visual disability may access the station platform at an ‘accessible’ subway station and yet encounter extensive and life-threatening barriers to boarding or exiting a subway car,” the suit reads.
