Congestion pricing assists disabled New Yorkers

Hallelujah! That’s what I said at an MTA news conference last year that announced a legally binding plan to make at least 95% of the city’s subway stations accessible by 2055.
The MTA agreed to make this unprecedented and long overdue commitment under pressure from multiple civil rights lawsuits filed by disability advocates, including my organization. Ultimately, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who can’t navigate stairs will be able to ride on the transportation system that makes our city hum.
Of course, elevators do cost money, lots of it. Because of our settlement, the MTA is committed to spending more than $1 billion a year to install elevators or ramps at nearly all of the remaining 334 inaccessible stations.
MTA Chair Janno Lieber says the authority is honing its elevator-installation practices to make them more cost-effective. By 2025, the MTA says it’ll have at least 67 more stations on the way to full accessibility, a faster pace than ever.
But no one should be surprised that, even if the MTA does implement smarter design and construction practices, it still will need a massive amount of money not only to install elevators but to do everything else the authority must do to keep the subways and buses accessible and running. Replacing track and buying new buses isn’t cheap either.
Enter congestion pricing. Once implemented, it’ll bring in $1 billion in revenue annually and will make up more than a quarter of the funds needed for the MTA’s capital plans. That’s real money going to real improvements.
If the program lives up to the claims of advocates, as it’s done in cities worldwide, congestion pricing also will convince at least some drivers to switch to public transit, clearing up dangerous gridlock on our streets. Assuming the MTA and the city work to mitigate the effects of spillover traffic in neighborhoods outside the congestion fee zone south of 60th St., who would object to making the city’s streets less of a dangerous, polluting mangle?
But of course, there are opponents to congestion pricing. They have plenty of arguments, but their objections often lose their power after closer examination. Nor do opponents ever suggest other ways of funding subway access or other vital transit projects. That’s apparently someone else’s problem.
One objection to congestion pricing that occasionally surfaces is that people with disabilities overall will be adversely affected, because they must drive into Manhattan since they can’t take the inaccessible subways.
Of course, just like other New Yorkers, the majority of people with disabilities aren’t driving into Manhattan. Some take subways, if they can, while others must use Access-A-Ride, the MTA’s paratransit service, which often falls behind schedule because of, yes, congestion. So less traffic should actually help speed Access-A-Ride travel.
But some disabled New Yorkers do drive or are driven into Manhattan because they have no other choice. They don’t live or work near accessible subway stations, or can’t take the subway in any case. Or they can’t rely on unreliable Access-A-Ride.
Fortunately, the congestion law includes an exemption for people with disabilities, again a result of advocacy by disability organizations. (The law also explicitly states that money raised by congestion pricing should be earmarked for accessibility projects.)
The MTA does have oversight of how those exemptions will be granted, and it must do right by the disabled community and deliver on what was promised by Albany. One model the MTA could use is London’s, which grants congestion pricing exemptions to any disabled person who has a Blue Badge, a parking permit that has a relatively simple application process. Sweden takes a similar approach in congestion zones in Stockholm and Gothenburg, its two largest cities.
New York’s approach could be similar. Some New Yorkers already have disability parking privileges through a program run by the city, and the MTA itself grants discount MetroCards to many disabled New Yorkers as well. Without creating a new bureaucracy or forcing people to go through another application process, the MTA could automatically qualify these and Access-A-Ride users for a congestion fee exemption.
In London, people with Blue Badges can register their own vehicle or one or two they travel in regularly. The MTA will also want to make sure that all vehicles in Access-A-Ride service, not just its own blue-and-white vans, are exempt from the charge.
No one likes to pay more to get around town, but congestion pricing will actually make it easier to travel on New York City’s subways and streets. With the right protections for disabled people, it’ll mean more elevators, safer streets and less polluted air — in other words, a more accessible, fairer city for all.
Rappaport is the executive director of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled (BCID).