Well, that’s good to hear. I actually didn’t know that since, not being accessible, I’ve never been in it before ;p.

Thank you .

When I was back in the city a couple weeks ago I gushed to my best friend how excited I was for the re-built Fulton St stations to come online – that will also help significantly.

What baffles me is why the Columbus Circle station isn’t slated for quicker renovation. That would seem to fill a need for more transfers available to 6 Av IND riders in particular.

cheaper to provide $60/ride services rather than to accelerate the process of rendering the majority of MTA subway stations accessible.

Emphasis mine.

I think this is clearly true. While in the long run it’s going to be cheaper to make the majority of subway service accessible, it would be absolutely prohibitive to accelerate the project. Much more efficient to do it as the stations need to be rebuilt (due to decay, deferred maintenance, etc.) anyway.

However, since a *huge* portion of the NYC subway system *already* needs to be rebuilt, often long ago, any additional funding to do so would be really helpful, at least until every construction firm in the area is fully employed (at which point you will have reached a limiting speed of work).

Some examples of paratransit internationally include:
London – Dial-a-Ride
Berlin – Telebus
Hong Kong: Rehabus

So, yeah, this is pretty much the international norm these days.

Nonemergency medical transportation is a big issue and access to medical care is a big issue; it doesn’t help to have health insurance if you can’t get to the hospital or clinic.

I agree with Aaron, that it’s a cost of civilization. I’m sorry Nathan has had such bad experiences with Access-A-Ride, but I don’t think that making ominous statements about “transit collapse” is adequate justification for getting rid of a program like AAR.

I appreciate your perspective, but I profoundly disagree that there is anything civilized about the access-a-ride operation. Theirs are some of the more aggressive drivers on the streets, roaring around with their 0 or 1 passengers and without much regard for any particular traffic boundary. Rather than a hallmark of civilization to me they represent the failure of our society to face liberal issues it claims to care about, but rather strap a giant engine to them and sleep soundly while this solution is out there literally killing people. This is the most barbaric way I can think of to be accessible.

How are major cities around the world meeting the needs of their populations? I know I haven’t seen a monster like access-a-ride blowing down streets that aren’t also clogged with Escalades. We’re closer to transit collapse than we should ever be and we have to think differently—beyond our own shores—about how to run it. If we don’t have a functioning public transit system, we certainly won’t have the economy required to subsidize paratransit for anyone.

“Even cities like LA, where the transit system was built after disability architectural standards were commonplace and is fully accessible to the disabled, still has a substantial population using paratransit for the above reason (the transit agency not being able to serve them under the ADA with regular fixed-route services).”

This is convincing me that the ADA is irrevocably flawed, or our established interpretation of it. It seems to fail under the condition that, at the end of the day and bluntly, everyone would rather be driven around than ride the subway. This is not to make light of any disability, but to observe that people act in their own interests and that when their costs are equal they’ll choose options that represent the most value (and cost to the public). If we don’t have some kind of cynical, quota-driven government board judging people’s abilities—and to me this sounds horrific—the only way to manage the supply of higher levels of service in a “fully accessible” system is to charge commensurately for them.