Congestion pricing is putting paratransit riders in a somewhat faster lane, MTA numbers show.
Since the early January launch of the Manhattan vehicle-tolling initiative, speeds are up 5% for Access-A-Ride vehicles within the congestion relief zone south of 60th Street, according to MTA data. That’s in comparison to the same time period in 2024.
Total travel times have also come down for the service, which carries people whose disabilities prevent them from riding on trains or buses.
It’s turning some former naysayers around on the tolls.
“I was against congestion pricing because I felt sorry for the people who had to pay the tolls,” said motorized wheelchair user Milagros Franco, 48, who commutes daily on Access-A-Ride between Gramercy Park and Downtown Brooklyn. “But when I started to realize how quickly I get to work, I saw that it’s amazing, almost phenomenal.”
Milagros Franco uses a ride share app to get accessible cabs to take her shopping and to work from her Gramercy building, June 23, 2021. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
The upward trend — which is not limited to the congestion zone — continues an extended turnaround toward faster and more dependable service for Access-A-Ride, whose citywide reliability fell to its lowest level in years in 2021. That’s when on-time performance sunk to 70% for the broker car services that provide the bulk of Access-A-Ride trips and as customer complaints and driver no-shows climbed during the pandemic.
Between the start of congestion pricing and the end of January, 94.6% of for-hire vehicles picked up passengers in Manhattan within 20 minutes of scheduled pickup times. During the same period last January, their on-time performance stood at 91%.
That figure also improved in February, when 94.9% of for-hire vehicles arrived within 20 minutes of scheduled pickup times. Last February, for-hire vehicles arrived within that window 90.6% of the time.
“The customers are telling us they’re getting around faster,” said Rachel Cohen, vice president of paratransit at the MTA. “They’re seeing and feeling that difference in their travels.”
The 143,027 trips through the congestion relief zone in the first two months of this year accounted for 9% of all Access-A-Ride trips citywide.
“These are not trends that started in January, but since the congestion relief was instituted, we’ve seen faster vehicle movement within the congestion relief zone,” Cohen said.
Paratransit riders said the Jan. 5 launch of tolls on motorists entering south of 60th Street has given a boost to their travels.
“Before it was almost an hour coming from uptown because of traffic,” said Eman Rimawi-Doster, a double amputee who commutes to the Garment District daily from her home in East Harlem. “Now it’s significantly gone down, so it’s more like 40 minutes, which I’d say is a great improvement.”
The MTA opened a new Access-A-Ride assessment center in Lower Manhattan on Stone Street, Oct. 30, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Michael Ring, a paratransit rider from Park Slope in Brooklyn, said he’s detected the changes during daily trips into Manhattan.
“I talk to every driver and they all say it’s less traffic in Manhattan and more business for them,” he said. “So it’s a win-win for them and a win for me because it’s just easier to get around.”
The improvements for New Yorkers with disabilities mark another gain for the vehicle-tolling scheme, which President Donald Trump is trying to squash.
While speeds on many express and local bus routes have increased, and revenue for planned capital improvements to mass transit is on target to meet its mark, congestion pricing could be on the clock.
Trump’s federal transportation chief last week extended by 30 days the deadline for the MTA to end the tolling plan, which originally faced a March 21 shutdown deadline from the feds. The money generated from the tolls is supposed to fund transit improvements that include increasing the number of subway stations that are fully accessible to people with disabilities.
That threat looms large for New Yorkers with disabilities.
“We could lose that ginormous amount of funding,” Rimawi-Dister said. “That’s a huge amount of money that goes specifically toward accessibility and improving paratransit, so if that was suddenly gone, I don’t know where the other money would come from.”
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