Every morning, like many New Yorkers, Chris Pangilinan checks his phone to see if there will be interruptions to his subway commute. There is a mixed bag of possibilities commuters have come to dread: track work, track fires, signal problems, injuries, overcrowded trains, or just unexplained delays.
But Pangilinan’s main concern doesn’t make that list. As he is getting ready to leave for work, he’s thinking about elevators.
As a wheelchair user, elevator accessibility on the subway determines Pangilinan’s movement throughout the city every single day. Pangilinan works near a subway station with an elevator, Bowling Green, and lives near elevator stations at Jay Street-MetroTech and Borough Hall, in Brooklyn. But about once a month, he faces another challenge: One of the elevators between those three stations doesn’t work.
Welcome to Curbed’s first-ever Transportation Week!
From how to improve public transportation in cities, ranking the best car-free neighborhoods across the country, and a friendly competition between NYC, San Francisco, and Los Angeles to determine which has the best public transit, this week is all about how we get around in our favorite cities. All aboard!
“I’ll arrive to a station and realize the elevator broke [...]