5 PROVIDING ACCESSIBILITY TO MTA STATIONS IN NEW YORK CITY

by Nandini B. Sengupta, Urbahn Architects

Architects are often acknowledged at the ribbon cutting ceremonies of buildings they have designed. Clients praise the look and feel of the building and end-users commend them on how well it serves the function. Those moments are gratifying, but none so much as when a user tells you how his or her life has been changed by what you designed. I recently had the privilege of one such conversation. I was back at a New York City subway station for which we had recently designed accessibility improvements. A middle aged, wheelchair bound person had just descended the elevator and was waiting on the platform for a train. My hard hat gave me away as an architect. She struck up a conversation, and upon learning that our team had designed the elevator and accessibility for that very station, she thanked me profusely, telling me that her life had been changed by this project. Previously she had to go to an accessible station a mile away to get to work. Her commute was now so much easier! Getting from one place to another is not so straightforward for many of our fellow citizens; providing accessibility for all is a public service that affects the lives of thousands.

Designers working on station accessibility improvements typically have at their disposal a “kit of parts,” but the specific solutions invariably require inventiveness to address the specific conditions at and around a station. Altering the built fabric of subway stations in New York City is no simple task. The transit system is the second oldest in the world, with much of the infrastructure dating back between 1904 and 1932. Largely designed and constructed by various private companies, it hosts a range of station configurations—underground running below the streets, open-cut in a trench that cuts through neighborhoods and elevated above the streets and sidewalks. Platform configurations are varied: platforms on the two sides of tracks, island platforms between tracks, combinations of the two, and other variations as well. In many transfer stations, two or more subway lines meet, oftentimes at different levels and odd angles, connected via stairs and a warren of passageways.

Typically, stairs at street corners lead to a mezzanine with fare arrays, and from there into a circulation system that lead to the platforms. Indeed, it is a three-dimensional puzzle that has been designed with consideration for safe access points at street corners, allowing clearances for street utilities in underground stations, allowing clearances for vehicles in elevated stations, while maintaining points of control that separate the “unpaid” side from the “fare paid” side.

Needling an elevator through this maze is no easy task. Architects and engineers should anticipate streets and sidewalks that are densely packed with utilities and other obstructions, oftentimes placed exactly in the otherwise ideal spot for an elevator. At the street level, elevator kiosks need to allow for the flow of pedestrians on the sidewalk while having adequate clearances from both neighboring buildings and the curb edge. They need to be carefully located to first take the passenger to the unpaid zone of the station. Thereafter, the wheelchair bound passenger passes through an accessible “AFAS” (ADA Farecard Access System) gate. While in a few situations they can get directly onto the platform, in most cases they take another set of elevators to the platforms. This is due to the requirement for the separation of the fare paid side from the unpaid side and/or due to the station configuration, particularly when island platforms are situated above or below the middle of the street, precluding the use of a single elevator shaft from the sidewalk. Complications are many - low headroom situations at mezzanines, utility or structural obstructions above the subway tunnel, low headroom situations above streets - creating challenges in accommodating elevator pits and integrating new elements and systems with a structure that is over a century old.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority is now in the midst of a much needed and ambitious initiative to make 95% of its subway stations accessible by 2045. Over the past few decades and up through the present, Urbahn Architects has been involved in providing innovative design for accessibility at dozens of New York City subway stations. In almost all cases, the elevator shafts and cabs are designed to maximize visibility and security through the extensive use of glass, typically an adaptation of the MTA standard unless a completely customized solution is warranted. At the 96th Street Station on Broadway, the median at the center of the roadway was widened to accommodate a new headhouse from where two elevators were dropped to the island platforms. The widened median was treated as a mini park, with a gently pitched granite ramp and plaza, plantings, and benches. The titanium metal panel roofed station house recalled the curved structure of the nearby 125th Street viaduct. At Eastern Parkway – Brooklyn Museum Station, we complemented the prominent nearby Brooklyn Museum with an elegant glass elevator kiosk that punctuates the station entry point without competing with the historic edifice designed by McKim Meade and White. At the elevated 170th Street Station in the Bronx, a single elevator at a street corner takes passengers up to a mezzanine from where two other elevators convey passengers up to the two side platforms. Within the 120-year-old transit network, accessibility interventions are often made to historic stations, requiring design sensitivity, either by matching finishes and historic details or clearly distinguishing modern interventions from historic fabric. While new elements can help articulate the entry to the station or become features, the design needs to be compatible with the character of the station and the neighborhood context.

Clearances and tolerances are measured in fractions of an inch in transit projects, and therefore investigation of field conditions needs to be exacting and design documentation must be precise. An architect working on transit stations should recognize that the need for intensive multi-discipline collaboration is even greater than on typical building design projects. These projects call for close coordination with civil, structural, mechanical, electrical, and communications engineers, as well as vertical transportation and other specialty consultants. In developing responsive and innovative accessibility solutions within a transit system that is over a century old, the full design team works together diligently to achieve design and construction excellence. l

Nandini B. Sengupta is a senior associate at Urbahn Architects. Over her 35-year career she has led Urbahn’s Transportation projects, many of them providing accessibility to MTA stations in New York City.

Urbahn Architects is a hundred-person NYC firm providing design services for a range of building types including higher education, K-12, justice, institutional, transportation, and other public sector projects. Since 1990, it has provided design services for accessibility improvements for over 30 stations. In 2022, Urbahn won the Society of American Military Engineers award for its work on providing accessibility to MTA stations.