Andrew Cuomo and the Curious Case of the $81 Million Elevator

Slate ^ | 20 Sept 2019 | HENRY GRABAR

[DUMBGRUNT]

Earlier this year, a Connecticut woman died after she fell trying to carry her 1-year-old daughter in a stroller down a staircase in a New York City subway station.

Nine months later, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority has provided us with the answer: It costs $81 million to make a station wheelchair-accessible—between three to 10 times what peer cities pay for the same work. Eighty-one million dollars for an elevator, or perhaps two. It’s a scandalous figure, and one that says as much about the state of American public infrastructure at large as it does about New York. We’re no good at this, and no one seems to care.

Transit-cost sleuth Alon Levy has some comparisons from across the pond, and they are not pretty: Virtually none of our European peers is spending more than $25 million per station on elevators, and many are spending less. Madrid, Spain, is adding three elevators to a metro station for $6 million. Lyon, France, is adding one for $4 million

Committing to spend $81 million to build a couple elevators, you would think, might have been a moment to step back and say: Something is wrong, and we should fix it.

Instead, Cuomo will plow ahead. We’ll get our 66 elevators. We could have had hundreds more.

[Gay State Conservative]

With my metal hips I find the staircases of the NYC subway particularly difficult.But after having used the elevators once or twice I've decided that the stairs are the better option.

[BronzePencil]

I believe it. I lived in NYC for 13 years and never took a subway elevator. I’m originally from Mass, I like your freeper name haha