The saga of a North Bronx subway station whose nearly $22 million makeover a decade ago did not include elevators finally has an end in sight — after federal prosecutors and riders with disabilities accused the MTA of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Transit officials announced last week that work to install elevators at the No. 6’s Middletown Road station is set to begin in February 2025 as part of ADA upgrades already underway at more than 30 stations.
But it’s been a winding path for the third-from-last stop on the northbound side of the line getting its own lifts and joining the growing ranks of accessible stations. Presently, only 145, or close to 30%, of the nearly 500 subway and Staten Island Railway stations are accessible, according to the MTA.
The MTA is under a court mandate to get that number to 95% by 2055, a costly and time-consuming process of adding modern elevators to stations that, in some cases, are more than a century old. The Middletown Road stop, for example, opened in 1920 and the MTA said work on the elevators there is expected to be completed by 2029.
“Retrofitting is always more expensive than considering accessibility from the beginning,” Rachel Weisberg, a supervising attorney for Disability Rights Advocates, the nonprofit legal rights center that represented the plaintiffs in the 2016 lawsuit, told THE CITY. “When disability and accessibility are considered from the beginning of a project, it’s going to make more sense for everybody.”
The legal battle over Middletown Road grew out of the station’s October 2013 to May 2014 shutdown — when staircases, ceilings and track structures were replaced but elevators were not added.
Two New Yorkers with disabilities, the advocacy organization Disabled In Action and Bronx Independent Living Services sued the MTA in 2016, charging that the agency failed to follow federal law that requires transportation authorities to make stations accessible to those with disabilities during renovations.
The Justice Department joined the case in 2018, charging that in correspondence prior to the start of the renovation, Federal Transit Administration officials pushed for the MTA to install an elevator at the station unless the agency could show it was not technically feasible to do so.
The MTA had countered that replacing stairs at Middletown Road was not enough to trigger federal accessibility requirements and that the project would be too pricey. The agency regularly does station enhancements that do not require making stops ADA-compliant.
But a federal judge sided with the plaintiffs in 2019.
“It is really frustrating because they know that the ADA says that you can’t make major improvements without making the station accessible,” said Jean Ryan, president of Disabled in Action, which was among the plaintiffs in the 2016 lawsuit. “And they didn’t do that.”
A federal judge signed off on a settlement agreement to the case in April, clearing the way for the MTA to add accessibility work at Middletown Road to its current five-year $55 billion capital plan for systemwide improvements.
Some of the MTA’s efforts to expand station features that benefit people with disabilities and parents with strollers will be funded through congestion pricing, the vehicle-tolling initiative set to start on Jan. 5 following a months-long “pause” by Gov. Kathy Hochul.
After accepting a stranger’s assistance to lug a stroller carrying her 2-year-old son up stairs into the station and then onto the platform, Brena Salazar said on Thursday she cannot wait for the next set of renovations at the Middletown Road stop.
“Then I won’t have to ask for help with the stroller anymore,” the 36-year-old told THE CITY in Spanish. “I can just take the elevator.”
Headed Towards Full Coverage
The MTA’s latest commitments to add elevators to the subway follow a landmark court settlement approved by a federal judge last year that legally mandated the MTA to make 95% of its stations fully accessible in just over three decades. The development has put accessibility on the express track for the country’s biggest mass transit system.
In 2024, the MTA has made more than a dozen subway stations come into compliance with the ADA, chairperson and CEO Janno Lieber said Wednesday at the agency’s monthly board meeting.
“There are more coming this week, we seem to be popping them out every couple of days,” Lieber said. “There are 36 in construction.”
That pace is five times faster than the transit agency has been able to complete ADA projects in the past, according to Jamie Torres-Springer, president of MTA Construction and Design.
“We’re pleased that we’re able to get Middletown in based on that settlement and based on the prioritization that we do to get to ADA accessibility,” Torres-Springer said.
Weisberg, the attorney for Disability Rights Advocates, said the long court battle has been vital to shaping how transit agencies across the country deal with what is required during renovations.
“It was a really important legal victory that helped pave the way for more accessibility within the MTA and across the country,” she said.
On the long path toward reaching the 95% mark, the MTA is aiming to ensure that riders will be no more than two stops away from an accessible station.
“Middletown Road made a lot of sense from that standpoint,” Lieber said.
Paula Mate, a rider on the No. 6 line, said adding elevators to the subway system is vital, though long overdue at Middletown Road.
She said she was thinking of quitting her job, which requires a subway commute, because walking up station stairs is not good for her back.
“They did think of the people with disabilities,” Mate told THE CITY in Spanish after carrying several shopping bags up the stairs.
Ryan, of Disabled In Action, said the past and looming work at the North Bronx stop serves as a case study in the difficulty of creating a more accessible transit system and city.
“There’s no police for the ADA,” she said. “The only thing that we can do is demand and then sue.”
