New York’s Subway System Vows to Be 95 Percent Accessible by 2055

nytimes.com

8 points·uptown··8 comments

That seems like a VERY long timeline to not even be 100% accessible. I know they claim that they currently have 120-something elevators, and admittedly I haven't ridden the subway since before COVID, but almost every elevator I came across was out of commission. Some had been for months/years.

The elevator at the Lex/125 station was out of order the entire year I lived at it. Maybe it worked on occasion during that time, but I never saw it without the out of order sign as I passed it.

By 2055 we'll have exoskeletons.

The speed of progress in this country is embarrassing sometimes. Infrastructure cost many times and takes much longer to build than in other OECD countries.

> cost many times and takes much longer to build than in other OECD countries.

Is there a known reason for this? I know in the past (possibly still) that there was a lot of corruption in infrastructure contracts. Is this still the case for these NYC contracts?

There's some very long articles from the NYT and I believe The Atlantic or one of those long form mags on the topic.

A mix of reliance on private contractors, union demands and decentralized nature of all the bits and pieces of engineering, all of which needs to be coordinated and lined up. Places like France and UK and Japan are more centralized (and unionization doesn't lead to the strange MTA and other rules we see here).

They can't keep the exiting elevators working... they are filled with urine, covered in semen and just nasty. Also super slow.

It would probably be cheaper to just have stair climbing robots.

Accessible would include clean, safe trains running on time.

It won't matter anyway, New York will be submerged well before 2055.

Maybe 2075 they will have stop announcements that are legible.

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