Advancing Transit Equity: Rethinking Accessibility in New York Transit System

New York City heavily depends on public transit, most notably the subway, which supports the daily commutes of those living and working in this city, alongside visiting tourists. Constructed 120 years ago without accessibility considerations, the system excludes people with disabilities from equal access.

Following a class-action settlement in 2022, the MTA is set to make 95% of its stations stair-free accessible by 2055. This settlement has led to mass MTA ADA upgrade projects and put issues of accessibility back into the major focus.

This 2026 AIANY Civic Leadership Program development session brought together experts from various backgrounds, architects, scholars, researchers, and MTA advisory committee members to rethink the definition of accessibility, analyze the current challenges, and brainstorm solutions to tackle accessibility in the New York subway system.

From his extensive experience working on MTA accessibility upgrade projects, Larry M. Gutterman, Associate Principal at Urbahn Architects, first laid out the challenges that not only limit design but increase time and costs: project-team complexities, issues in existing site conditions, and structural, utility, and space hurdles.

Sarah M. Kaufman, Director of the NYU Rudin Center for Transportation, then emphasized aging and complex infrastructure, high cost of construction, and cost containment measures as the systemic challenges making securing capital funding the key to success.

However, inaccessibility in transit goes beyond physical barriers. Alex Norman, Founder and CEO of Access Built, then zoomed into human scale, identifying often unrecognized mental stress riders experience in subway stations and how the environment, including high temperatures, noises, crowds, and overwhelming information, increases the challenges to process information and make decisions.

Mark Hughes, member of the MTA's Advisory Committee for Transit Accessibility, provided his lived experience as a wheelchair user, offering a closer look at daily physical barriers while pointing to the planned fully accessible Interborough Express (IBX) as a model of systemwide management and guidelines.

In a collaborative roundtable following the presentations, the panelists and CLP cohort transitioned from diagnosing constraints to exploring solutions. The group first addressed why New York's transit hubs often fall behind global peers, and revisited factors limiting station design. Then it identified several possible solutions, including low-cost wayfinding and signage improvements as rapid and efficient solutions to make the stations easily accessible to the general public. Additionally, the group investigated visibility and architectural landmarks as ways of improving navigation issues and alleviating mental stress.

As a whole, the session emphasized a crucial design principle: true accessibility extends beyond step-free access and requires accommodating a wide spectrum of physical, cognitive, and sensory needs- It benefits everyone, not just those with identified disabilities. By educating themselves on the need for accessibility and embracing these challenges, architects and planners can reshape the New York transit network into a system that welcomes and supports everyone.