Only 28% of NYC subway stations are wheelchair-accessible, and the ones that are have elevators that break down 25 times per day

Of New York City's 472 subway stations, only about 28% are fully ADA-accessible — meaning they have elevators or ramps that allow wheelchair users, people with strollers, and those with mobility impairments to reach the platform. The remaining 72% have only stairs. For the stations that do have elevators, reliability is a persistent crisis: disability rights advocates documented an average of 25 elevator breakdowns per day across the system. When an elevator breaks at one of the few accessible stations, a wheelchair user's trip doesn't just get delayed — it gets canceled entirely, because the next accessible station might be a mile away in a different direction. The cascading impact of a single elevator outage reveals how fragile the accessible transit network really is. A wheelchair user plans a trip from the Bronx to Midtown. Their home station has an elevator. Their destination station has an elevator. But if either elevator is broken — and with 25 daily breakdowns, the odds are not trivial — they must reroute to a different accessible station, potentially adding 30-60 minutes and requiring a bus transfer to cover the gap. There is no real-time rerouting that accounts for elevator status; the MTA app shows elevator outages, but trip planners don't automatically suggest accessible alternatives. The rider has to figure it out themselves, often while standing at the top of stairs they cannot descend. Riders report missed job interviews, late arrivals to medical treatments, and the accumulated psychological toll of never being able to trust that their planned route will work. This problem is structural and decades in the making. The NYC subway opened in 1904, long before the ADA was passed in 1990. Retrofitting century-old underground stations with elevators requires excavation, structural reinforcement, and utility relocation that can cost $30-100 million per station. The MTA's 2025-2029 capital plan includes modernization of 45 elevators and accessibility upgrades at additional stations, but at the current pace, full system accessibility is estimated to take until the 2050s. The ADA itself contains loopholes: stations only need to be made accessible when they undergo "major renovations," which allows agencies to defer compliance indefinitely by classifying work as maintenance rather than renovation. A class-action lawsuit by Disability Rights Advocates has forced some progress, but litigation is slow and the physical constraints of stations built 120 years ago remain real.