Five New Yorkers with disabilities are currently suing the MTA for excluding more than 160,000 Access-A-Ride users from discounts including half fares for seniors and people with disabilities and 30-day and seven-day unlimited fares.

Access-A-Ride is the MTA’s transit service for people with disabilities who cannot use, or are substantially limited in their ability to use, subways or buses. In 2021 alone, the program serviced more than 5,607,000 rides via paratransit, or individual rides supplementing the fixed-route and schedule system of other public transit. Residents who are unable to use stairs are also conditionally eligible for Access-A-Ride when a trip requires the use of an inaccessible subway station. Seniors and individuals with disabilities residing in Morningside Heights and West Harlem are particularly reliant on this program as the 1 train has only one disability-accessible subway stop between the 97th Street and 230th Street stations.

“For that large area [of Morningside Heights and West Harlem], to have to have zero accessible stations really ups the ante and and raises the stakes for how important Access-A-Ride is for people who live in [those] neighborhood[s],” Christopher Schuyler, senior staff attorney at the New York Lawyers for Public Interest, said.

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NYLPI is joined by Mobilization for Justice and Jenner & Block LLP in representing the plaintiffs filing suit in the New York Supreme Court. The suit cites federal Title 49 for comparable complementary paratransit service, which requires governments to offer disability-accommodated services of equivalent quality to the programs for which they substitute. Dan Ross, staff attorney at Mobilization for Justice, emphasized the importance of the transit equality that Access-A-Ride was originally established to provide.

“Just like for all New Yorkers, the buses and subways are how we get around, and how we do everything that we need to do in the city,” Ross said. “It’s important to get to school, to get to work, to see friends, to enjoy the city’s life and culture and entertainment, to go to doctor’s appointments. The bus and the subway are critical for all New Yorkers, and for people where the buses and subways are inaccessible because of their disabilities, Access-A-Ride has to fill that void.”

Plaintiffs Valerie Britt, Vernice Desport, James McEnroe, Helen Murphy, and Sheila Murray all describe having experienced “harm from ongoing exclusion of AAR Public Transit from Defendants’ Fare Discount Program.” A daily subway and bus commuter paying full fare saves $38 per month and $456 per year with a 30-day unlimited pass. As Schuyler explained, if extended to paratransit users, these savings would be consequential.

“Cost is important to everybody in New York City,” Schuyler said. “With the cost of living being so high, everybody can benefit from discount programs and fair transit costs, but no one group will more so than Access-A-Ride riders as people with disabilities are disproportionately below the poverty line.”

Beyond cost savings, Ross explained that the MTA’s exclusion of paratransit from fare discounts exacerbates inequality for people with disabilities.

“The ability for people to be able to afford to get to where they need to go and to be able to leave their apartment and participate in the life of the city is essential,” Ross said. “Many people with disabilities don’t have jobs, and one of the main barriers to getting jobs, other than discrimination on employers’ part, is the lack of affordable, reliable transportation. These [fare discount] programs that are available to everyone else to make their commutes more affordable should be available to all people with disabilities.”

According to Schuyler, although many New Yorkers with disabilities use paratransit regardless of the accessibility accommodations of subway stations and buses, they represent a “smaller subset” of total Access-A-Ride users. As most New York City subway stations remain inaccessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act, there is a greater demand for the Access-A-Ride program, which results in its strain. In comparison to buses and subways, Schuyler said many paratransit users are paying more for a lower-quality service .

Though the suit is in its early stages, Ross and Schuyler said that a victory would significantly improve the financial well-being of New Yorkers with disabilities. In addition to universalizing the MTA’s fare discount programs, the plaintiffs are seeking individual and class-wide damages as reimbursement for financial harm imposed by fare charges.

“This case is really about fundamental fairness,” Ross said. “People who rely on public transit to get around New York City ought to be able to all pay the same fares. And if they qualify for a discount on the bus, but the bus isn’t accessible to them, they should qualify for the discount on Access-A-Ride. City transit says, in its own literature, Access-A-Ride is just like public transit, and it needs to stop treating its fare collection differently.”