[Mythanar]

I highly suspect it is plain cheaper (and more convenient) to just subsidize private car rides for disabled people than making entire transit infrastructure in huge city to account for them.

Better yet, take the money that government would otherwise spend on building all the wheelchair accomodations, and just distribute that between wheelchair users. I am sure many of them would prefer that over subway improvements which they might never use.

"Disabled people cannot reach their [work, school, childcare, w/e]", if true, is a valid problem. There are multiple ways to solve that problem. "NYC subway does not have wheelchair accomodations" is a useless outrage over circumstantial symptoms.

[matthewmacleod]

Remember that it's not just people in wheelchairs who benefit from accessibility though. The elderly, injured infirm, people with small children etc. also find accessibility helpful.

Modern accessibility policy is focused in a large part around allowing people with accessibility requirement to live as normal a life as possible. It's not going to change overnight, but by making sure that all new construction and refurbishments are accessible, over time the situation will improve. The only quibble is over the extent of funding that will be made available.

[colinbartlett]

I had very minor foot surgery recently and the first time I went to use the subway it dawned on my how none of my regular stops have elevators. My journey was slow and painful and this was just for a few weeks. I can't imagine having to deal with this frustration daily, even to the point of needing to find an apartment and a job near stops that are accessible.

[r0naa]

>Remember that it's not just people in wheelchairs who benefit from accessibility though.

In addition to that, I wager there's value in extending the current infrastructure so as to not ostracize disabled people even further.

[ethbro]

I think grandparent comment's point was that at some point, greater good for disabled people can be delivered by specifically helping them rather than re-engineering the world to fit them. Considering that each has a concrete price tag attached to it.

The "wheelchair that can climb stairs" vs "adding ramps everywhere" comparison.

I feel like in the past the latter made more economic sense, but at some point technology might tip the balance the other way.

[ed_balls]

And also the delivery of goods.

[Proof]

In Finland, everything is wheelchair-friendly from our Helsinki metro, to trains, to buses. I am kinda shocked to read Americans think it's not important to allocate the money to enable those with limitations to live their lives as freely as they, the able-bodied do. The mentality "it does not apply to me, why should I fine two fucks?" is all too common in the American ethos. Quite pathetic really.

[GabrielF00]

The Helsinki Metro was built in 1982 and has 17 stations, of which 6 are underground. The New York City subway system has 472 stations, almost all of which are either underground or above grade. It was first opened in 1904. The difference in cost and complexity of providing universally accessible service is massive.

[BoorishBears]

I'm impressed anyone who's ever seen so much as a picture of a full NYC subway car would try and compare them to trains in Finland...

[Markoff]

will better don't look okay American banking, trains and internet either

there is some odd perception flying around world that US is particularly developed country, while reality about their infrastructure contradicts this

[stuaxo]

Were managing to convert the underground in London to be wheelchair friendly, you guys need to make a start too.

Start with new stations and ones a few apart and work your way in.

[afarrell]

Also, people buying carrying furniture from IKEA or large amounts of groceries.

[ardit33]

The thing with accessibility elevators is it just not people in wheel chair that benefit from them. Elderly people, people that have sports injury and can't climb stairs, having groceries, or kids and strollers etc, etc...

Even in the sidewalks, the lips of the sidewalks that slope towards the street in intersections, it is just not people with wheelchairs that benefit from them, but anybody with carrying a stroller, rolling luggage for a trip, etc...

When I had a soccer injury 10 years ago, for one month straight I couldn't walk without some major pain. I had to plan my trips according to places that I could access, and it gives you some insight into people that are really disabled.

[closeparen]

They conditions in station elevators are usually such that I could not imagine using one if it wasn't physically required.

Underground station bathrooms, if they were ever built, have been locked down since 9/11. Elevators have substituted as a private, out-of-the-way place to attract the worst of the worst in terms of piss, shit, and homeless people in various stages of crisis. Kind of degrading that we expect/require people with disabilities to use them, really.

[Markoff]

dirty elevator is still better than no elevator is you ask me, one can't be too picky if one wanna get to some place

i am much more annoyed when somewhere they install that special wheelchair stairs lift instead of proper vertical elevator anyone with small children can use

i would be curious, people make these decisions don't have children that they think that wheelchair lift usually locked by special key is enough? because by my experience zero parents will call stuff to use this list for stroller and rather ask strangers to help them

[tim333]

Even the fit but plain lazy like myself have been known to use them.

[Markoff]

i am not native speaker, but you meant carrying stroller as in pushing or literally carrying it folded?

[nkassis]

Pushing it.

[potatolicious]

> "I highly suspect it is plain cheaper (and more convenient) to just subsidize private car rides for disabled people"

This is true, and also why NYC has ParaTransit for disabled people, which amounts to an on-demand car/minibus service that is paid for by the transit agency.

The service levels are pretty terrible, though, because it turns out the private operators that actually provision these rides don't have a lot of incentive to go through the costs of operating accessible vehicles to address such a small market. Wait times for a vehicle are extremely long.

More importantly, disability and motion-handicaps are not binary, nor are they always permanent. There exist a large number of people who have difficulty climbing stairs who are not wheelchair-bound (see: the elderly, the pregnant, people coming from the airport...), and there exist a significant number of people who temporarily suffer from motion handicaps, whose handicaps are too temporary to be enrolled in ParaTransit (see: a guy with a leg cast).

Accessible stations and vehicles help these people also, not just the stereotype of the permanent wheelchair-bound person. The reality is that accessiblity features in our infrastructure benefit a lot more than those who are permanently or completely handicapped.

[Mythanar]

ParaTransit specifically is a non-profit organization. "Non-profit" and "incentives" generally don't mix well. Better service would require paying market rates - by the city, or partly by the city.

And it'd still be cheaper than building accessibility over existing subway infrastructure.

You make a very good point that disability is not binary; there is an entire spectrum from Michael Phelps to Steven Hawking. In some ways, having three kids on your back can be considered a [temporary] disability ;) My main point is that going down the percentage of affected population drastically changes the ROI of changing the infrastructure as a whole versus addressing the people involved individually. And wheelchairs specifically is fairly far down that scale.

[potatolicious]

ParaTransit does not operate vehicles themselves - ParaTransit is simply a program that purchases these services from private, for-profit operators (like, say, Uber), and manages eligibility checks as well as payment to providers for rides delivered.

> "Better service would require paying market rates - by the city, or partly by the city."

This is what happens. The riders themselves pay the "regular" transit fare of $2.75, and the agency (which is actually a state agency, but partially funded by the city) pays the rest. The service is operated at private industry rates.

The problem here is there is simply very little incentive for cab company or driver to service this demographic. Accessible vans are expensive and they reduce "normal" passenger capacity. Accessible customers require more time - both traveling to pickups, as well as getting in/out of the vehicles, which is time the driver is not being paid.

The small size of the customer base also means drivers spend much more time than usual traveling to a pickup.

The natural equilibrium state of this market, given the cost of providing the service, and the size of the customer base, results in very sub-par service levels. We can improve this somewhat by paying dramatically more for these rides, but that undermines the ROI argument pretty badly.

> "My main point is that going down the percentage of affected population drastically changes the ROI of changing the infrastructure as a whole versus addressing the people involved individually."

I agree - but my contention is that modeling the accessibility issues with the NYC subway as "permanently wheelchair-bound population" vs. "everyone else" is very incomplete. The ROI on accessibility improvements to our infrastructure must take into account all users of such features, not just the most extreme/permanent users.

The beneficiaries of, say, elevators in stations is the union set of [pregnant people, elderly people, wheelchair-bound people, crutch-bound people, people carrying large amounts of cargo, ...] - plus probably more categories I've missed. The union of these sets is pretty darned large, and a heck of a lot larger than simply the wheelchair-bound population.

The ROI argument only works if we assume a much narrower pool of users than it would be in reality.

[AdamJacobMuller]

> The small size of the customer base also means drivers spend much more time than usual traveling to a pickup.

Wouldn't a service like Uber avoid this issue? The cost for a disabled persons Uber ride won't be significantly above the cost for my Uber ride. While the cost of a dedicated service, per ride, will be significantly higher.

[taejo]

Did you happen to read the paragraph above the one you quoted:

> The problem here is there is simply very little incentive for cab company or driver to service this demographic. Accessible vans are expensive and they reduce "normal" passenger capacity. Accessible customers require more time - both traveling to pickups, as well as getting in/out of the vehicles, which is time the driver is not being paid.

The cost for a disabled person's Uber ride is significantly above the cost of your Uber ride, and so there's no incentive for Uber to service this market at the same price.

[solatic]

Plain cheaper, sure. But the government isn't a for-profit corporation. One of the central policy themes of the last few decades is increasing inclusivity, that the mainstreaming of marginalized people isn't solely for their direct benefit but also to increase their visibility in the eyes of the majority and as such build awareness and empathy.

Segregationist policy is un-American.

[nailer]

> Plain cheaper, sure. But the government isn't a for-profit corporation.

Spending money efficiently and helping disabled people more than modifying every building would, doesn't in any way imply that the government is a for profit corporation.

[greenyouse]

I don't want this to come off as harsh but it's a huge city with lots of money that has a pretty large disabled community. They've been really slow upgrading their train stations but their lack of action doesn't make it OK to never fix the problem.

Keeping people from riding the subway because they're disabled is a form of discrimination under ADA. IANAL but I think cities like NYC need to have a plan for upgrading accessibility features and show progress month over month. Failure to make any progress would probably leave them liable for violations of the ADA + Rehabilitation Act (that's what happened to Boston's MBTA). With the threat of a lawsuit, it's probably cheaper to just get a plan and start upgrading stations. Plus, it helps people.

[Markoff]

could parents with strollers sue them? i guess it would be much bigger group than disabled people

[greenyouse]

In 2015 the CDC estimated that 1 in 5 American adults was living with a disability.

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2015/p0730-us-disability....

[Markoff]

physical disability affecting ability to walk upstairs and downstairs? i doubt that

according such statistics it's also half of the women experiencing domestic violence, when you tell your wife you wanna watch different TV show than her, it's some verbal abuse or violence and similar crap with rape statistics in Sweden

[dzdt]

Subway infrastructure should probably target a useful life of 100 years. Over that time, demographics will shift to an older population even as city population increases. It may look cheaper to skip improvements now, but long term I doubt it is the same calculation.

[cujo]

I don't think I buy this as a viable alternative. The first problem that pops into my head is transportation for disabled people who are visiting the city or that commute in for whatever reason. Providing them access to the disabled-taxi-program is problematic.

[Mythanar]

How so? Order Uber/Lyft ride, send a CC receipt to NYC gov with a disability proof. Get money back.

Any complications I am missing?

[potatolicious]

This is literally how it works - except it's paid for directly by the city government, rather than an expense-reimbursement situation.

This is important since ParaTransit is pegged to the regular public transit fare ($2.75 a ride as of right now), and it'd be unreasonable to expect someone with low income to float a large expense ($20+) until they are reimbursed.

Nor would it be reasonable to expect the government to reimburse arbitrary amounts of money incurred for travel from parties unknown to the government.

The complication is that wait times for this service is awful, because the incentives do not encourage a sizable accessible vehicle fleet. The service advises users to be prepared for up to an hour's total wait + travel time to go less than 3 miles.

In contrast, in the same amount of time an able bodied person can take the subway 20+ miles.

It'd be unreasonable to expect a handicapped person to be able to travel as easily as an able-bodied person, but the disparity is pretty extreme.

[morsch]

You think visitors to a city will put up with the bureaucratic interaction you describe to recover 20 bucks? Might as well not have it.

[Markoff]

what about everyone with cold in stroller? they should ask for refund too or be jailed at home first 1-3 years?

[Markoff]

it's not really just disabled people, actually they are pretty irrelevant group compared to families with children in stroller and elderly, you will understand this once you will have child, that while until then you thought all those ramps everywhere are useless for those few disabled people there are tons of parents work children in strollers, heck i would say majority of population is dealing with this at least once in life, so good luck subsidizing these people

[djrogers]

Your solution, while logical and seemingly full of common sense, is orthagonal to the regulatory and statutory solutions put in place in this country.

[randyrand]

When people think of better solutions, regulations often change.

For example, there used to be a law in chicago that saloons needed to have a place to tie up at least 10 horse. That law quickly became outdated when the next best thing, the car, came around.

[djrogers]

Oh they should - I just don't have any expectation that ADA compliance regulations will change to the extent this would require in my lifetime.

[erroneousfunk]

I have reason to believe that you're not only wrong, but that giving up on making public transportation accessible in favor of paratransit would be a huge detriment to everyone, especially the disabled.

I live in Boston, and follow the politics and spending of the MBTA pretty closely. Their current paratransit system costs $40-$50 per trip, EACH WAY. It costs them about $100 million/year to operate (http://www.mbta.com/uploadedfiles/About_the_T/Panel/Paratran...)

It's expensive because they need large vans with wheelchair lifts, trained drivers, and service is door to door. They cover the entire service area of the regular public transport system, and coordinating rides is difficult and time-consuming. If this were replaced by a cab system, you'd have to train drivers and still get the expensive large vans. You'd need a way to guarantee service availability and reliability. That sort of thing isn't cheap.

Looking at elevators, even a very expensive 2-3 story elevator is $50k to install, and might be $10k yearly for a service contract (http://www.facilitiesnet.com/elevators/article/Economics-of-...) Certainly, the cost of elevators, escalators, and other accommodations are trivial in the MBTA budget, compared to the cost of paratransit. I've read a lot of budget documents from them, and I've never seen "elevators and escalators" as a line item. I mean, we're talking a $2 billion budget. $100 million is expensive. Even if you cut it in half somehow, it's still expensive. $1 million for elevator maintenance? Not expensive.

Because of the extreme expense of paratransit, it's difficult to sign up for the program. You can't simply arrive in Boston as a tourist in a wheelchair and expect to hop on the paratransit system. You apply, you submit records, you interview, you get issued a special account -- it's a big deal. They cover the entire service area of the existing public transport system and coordination is difficult, so you have to request a ride at least an hour before it arrives.

In addition, "the disabled" are not a group of people who just sit at home until their next doctors appointment or grocery store trip, and are happy to apply for a paratransit pickup the day before. They go out with friends, travel with friends (I've ridden the bus/subway with friends in wheelchairs several times -- it would be super awkward if they had to take a separate car), they might be running late for something, they decide they want to stop at a bar after work, or spontaneously run a few errands during a free moment. While paratransit may be very useful for some people (very sick, the elderly, patients with dementia, etc) it would be downright weird for an otherwise healthy and active person who's simply unable to use stairs.

Above and beyond that, accessibility doesn't just help the disabled. The author referenced this article: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_curb_cut_effect about curb cuts becoming widespread, which ended up being a tremendous help to people who were ablebodied, as well. My relatives come to visit Boston, and both my mother and grandmother have different forms of severe arthritis. For about a year after her hip surgery, my mom had to walk with a cane -- we took the elevators at every subway stop. We did the same when my grandparents were in town. I had a bad ankle sprain a few years ago and also had to use the elevators. You see a lot of people with strollers, luggage, several small children in tow during rush hour -- elevators are a huge benefit.

As a healthy, young, ablebodied person, I would never ever want the accessibility of public transport to go away in favor of "stairs for the normies" and "taxi vouchers/cash for people in wheelchairs." It's frankly a terrible plan that benefits no one.