Wheelchair Accessible New York City

New York City Transportation Accessibility

There are almost 1 million New Yorkers who have disclosed living with a disability, or roughly 11.2% of the city’s population. In addition, by applying the 11.2% variable to the 60.7 million people who visited New York City in 2016, we estimate that approximately 6.8 million visitors to NYC each year have a disability.

New York City is the world’s busiest and most dynamic city. Residents and tourists
alike rely on the streets to be safe and on public transportation to get them where they need to go. Of the nearly 1 in 8 New Yorkers who have self-identified as living with disabilities, about 10% are estimated to use wheelchairs.

Through the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Department of City Planning
(DCP), and collaboration from other agencies working with MOPD, the City has made a concerted effort to ensure that all New Yorkers, including the more than 5.5 million people who use public transportation each day, are able to navigate the City.

Access A Ride

Access-A-Ride (AAR) provides transportation for people whose disability prevents their use of accessible mass transit, public bus, or subway service for some or all of their trips. AAR is the largest paratransit service in the world, scheduling an average of 27,367 rides per weekday with a total of 6,395,430 trips during 2016. There has been an increase of nearly 6 million trips since 1994, the year the service was transferred from New York City to the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA).