When it comes to getting around New York City in his wheelchair, Dustin Jones has found three methods that generally work for him.
There’s the subway, though roughly three-quarters of subway stations in the city are still not ADA accessible. There are buses, but Jones said those always tend to run a little behind where he lives in the Bronx.
And then there’s a relatively new paratransit program run by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority: the Access-A-Ride on-demand e-hail pilot. Launched in 2017, this pilot program allows more than 1,000 users of the MTA’s paratransit service, known as Access-A-Ride, to use an app to request yellow and green cab rides on-demand for just $2.75 per trip. Normally, Access-A-Ride users have to book rides a day in advance. “The e-hail paratransit service has been a godsend,” Jones, a board member at the advocacy group Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York, said of the widely popular pilot program. “It is the only way where a person with a disability can travel and get a straight ride anywhere on-time or on-demand.”