BY GIANCARLOS ASENCIO
As part of many new upgrades, the Metropolitan Transit Authority spent $26.7 million to renovate five elevators at the Yankee Stadium subway station. But that hasn’t stopped MTA riders from dealing with unreliable elevator service.
Including the $26.7 million for the Yankee Stadium stop, the MTA spent a total of $74.8 million for 14 elevators across different stops for renovation. The MTA has planned to redo these elevators to make them more accessible and reliable for riders. They elevators have been under construction since November 2024, but they still seem to have issues with full functionality.
An analysis of MTA records cited by the New York Post found the new Yankee Stadium station elevators logged 41 outages between April and September. As a result, the elevators are expected to be out of service until January 2027. So far, the plan to increase accessibility has taken a slight hit, and people have to wait longer for functional elevators.
Just a few months ago, on July 29th, the MTA and a coalition of Disability Rights Advocates reached a settlement requiring the MTA to be more transparent in its public communication about elevator outages, coinciding with the acceleration of installed lifts. According to The City Reporter, this settlement comes almost a decade after the MTA was sued by New Yorkers with disabilities because of their lack in keeping subway elevators in good shape.
“Whenever I pass through the Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center subway station, I’ve noticed the elevators that haven’t been in use for months and see people who may need to use them as a detour, having to take longer paths just to get to their stop”, said Giovanni Hodge, a daily MTA rider. Currently Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center has two out of service elevators. One is the Mezzanine to the B/Q platform and the other is the Mezzanine to the Manhattan-bound 2/3.
More work for the MTA continues as their renovation of these elevators takes a halt as they have to also have to fix those that are now out of service. The remodeling of these elevators still can be a positive as it can help accessibility for those who need it. However, it has seemingly been shown to also be affecting maintenance and ironically, accessibility.