Judge rules for MTA over shoddy lifts
The MTA’s elevators might be terrible, but they don’t violate the rights of disabled people, a judge has ruled.
Manhattan Federal Judge George Daniels’ 14-page decision is a blow to disability rights advocates seeking to hold the Metropolitan Transportation Authority accountable for elevators at select subway stations that are frequently out of order.
The busted elevators drastically limit wheelchair users’ ability to get around the city. Nevertheless, the shoddy elevators didn’t rise to the level of a systematic, discriminatory violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act, Daniels ruled.
“This court is not disillusioned to believe that these elevators are spotless or that the class members have not had run-ins with elevators that they find to be unacceptable. This, however, is not the standard for finding a violation of the ADA,” Daniels wrote in the decision released Monday.
The suit, brought by the Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York, other advocacy groups and wheelchair users, relied too much on anecdotal evidence rather than statistics, the judge wrote.
A problem with the case was that the groups “do not, and cannot, describe what more is required of defendants [the MTA] in order to comply with the ADA, other than to say things should be better,” he wrote.
Advocacy groups are mulling their next step. ”We will surely continue the fight to make the subway usable for everyone,” said Michelle Caiola, a lawyer of Disability Rights Advocates. NYC Transit data show subway elevators were out of service 3.7% of the time in 2019 — but keeping track of outages is tricky, as the MTA’s online reports are often inaccurate, studies from the transportation advocacy group TransitCenter show.
“This ruling doesn’t change the fact that the MTA’s elevator reliability lags systemically behind other cities,” said TransitCenter associate Colin Wright.
Just one-fourth of the subway’s 472 stations are currently accessible. Transit officials plan to add ramps or elevators to an additional 66 stations over the next five years through the MTA’s latest capital plan.