The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round… Unless You’re In a Wheelchair

First – let’s address the obvious. Clearly, this isn’t a photo of NYC that I took – although I did screenshot it while within New York City’s borders. I stumbled upon this image after stumbling, and very much falling, down the black hole of Reddit on a chilly Wednesday evening last week. I will not deny that I saw my own habitual reaction portrayed here, but I didn’t think much of this mediocre-quality meme until the next morning when, while riding the M23 to Baruch, I felt the bus stop and begin to emit an all-too familiar series of repetitive high-pitched beeps as it slowly tilted slightly to one side. The “Ladies and Gentlemen” of the bus, all of whom would momentarily be asked to clear the area reserved for people with disabilities, let out a collective groan and pulled out their phones to fire off a quick message: “Will be late. Buses Suck.” MTA, amirite?

Curiously, the marvelous mess that we call our city’s public transportation system  actually touts itself as being “the first public agency in the world to have a bus fleet 100 percent accessible to customers who use wheelchairs.” Considering that a 2015 MTA study found that 11.2 percent of passengers who ride the city’s buses on an average weekday are senior or disabled, it certainly appears that the accessibility of public buses is critical for a significant portion of our city’s residents – especially if one takes into account that the number of New Yorkers over 65 is rising steadily as a result of population aging. And yet, numerous studies and interview series performed in the past decades have demonstrated that wheelchair users and other physically impaired individuals face a number of challenges when it comes to taking public buses, including bus operators untrained in using their wheelchair equipment, and a lack of enforcement against cars blocking bus stops, (thus preventing drivers from being able pull up to the curb so disabled riders can board and exit safely.) Both individuals organizing studies of public transportation and MTA officials themselves point to inefficient handling of wheelchair-ridden passengers as a factor leading to the drastic decline in public bus ridership (14% since 2007); if buses have to stop for upwards of ten minutes to safely board and secure a wheelchair passenger, it is of no surprise that individuals with tight schedules will abandon the rickety bus system and seek the commute havens provided by Uber and Via.

And, it’s not as if disabled New Yorkers have many feasible alternatives for getting around the city: fewer than 25 percent of subway stations have functioning elevators, and on average, each subway elevator breaks down 53 times a year. A 2017 report from TransitCenter found that, out of the 472 subway stations throughout the city, only 110 are wheelchair accessible. In a city where 56 percent of residents use public transportation to get to and from work, ensuring the disabled community can navigate the city efficiently and independently is crucial to their success in the workplace. As of 2011, the employment gap between disabled New Yorkers and their able-bodied counterparts was 41.3 percent, almost two points higher than the national employment gap. Many advocates attribute this disparity (and the high rate of poverty among the disabled,) to the city’s inaccessible infrastructure. Lastly, it’s important to remember that the  repercussions of the struggle of the city’s physically disabled to succeed professionally affect us all, since a significant portion of New York City’s population is essentially barred from contributing to our city’s economy.

The current “solution” intended to bear the weight of the disabled commuters not served by the buses and subways is Access-A-Ride. You know, that program we’re all vaguely aware of, occasionally see notices for, but know very little about. A very superficial description of the A.D.A-mandated program makes the service sound pretty appealing: commuters can book rides to various destinations around the city for $2.75 -the cost of a ride on public transportation. While at first glance, it’s easy to picture Access-A-Ride as some sort of magical inexpensive taxi service, customers say the program (which the MTA expects will cost $521 million in 2018,) is plagued with issues ranging from dangerous behaviour by drivers and malfunctioning vehicles to rides that are perpetually late – or don’t arrive at all. Access-A-Ride currently boasts a whopping 2-Star rating on Yelp (shockingly, ranking somehow lower than that sketchy C-Rated Buffet we all have in our neighborhood.) After accounting for inefficient routing, missed rides, inefficient fuel use, and other systematic issues, Access-A-Ride leads to an estimated loss of over 100 million dollars a year.

Clearly, truly universal access to public transportation is beneficial not only from a socioeconomic perspective, but from an environmental one too. Individual cars and taxis taken by wheelchair passengers who have given up on the MTA getting them to their destination undoubtedly cause unnecessary pollution – and the clunky, dated, and inefficient Access-A-Ride vehicles are not much of a step up. A lawsuit against the transit agency, recently joined by the Justice Department, described New York’s subway system as one of the least accessible in the country. It said that all the stations in the Washington Metro and on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system are accessible to passengers in wheelchairs, as are 74 percent of the stations in Boston, 68 percent in Philadelphia and 67 percent in Chicago. As a city that claims to be future-centric and open to those from all walks (and rides) of life, New York City clearly needs to do better.