CTA’s plan to make stations 100% accessible is too slow, advocates say

Mike Ervin relies on a wheelchair to get to and from his home on Printers Row, but is increasingly taking public transportation because the nearest subway stop on Harrison Street has no elevator.

He is disappointed that the Chicago Transit Authority does not plan to install an elevator in this station until 2038, which is the CTA’s deadline for upgrading the remaining 30% of its stations that are not accessible to people with disabilities.

“I was not a fan of the plan from the beginning. We just had the 34th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act and they say it will take 50 years to achieve full accessibility,” said Ervin, 68.

Ervin protested against the CTA in the 1980s to pressure the transit agency to equip its buses with elevators.

“I just hope I’m alive until (my station) is accessible,” Ervin said.

The CTA last week released its revised plan for its All Stations Accessibility Program (ASAP), which would make it the first transit system in more than a century to be 100% accessible.

However, the plan is anything but “ASAP”.

Five years after these plans began, the CTA has still not added a single elevator and the estimated cost has more than doubled to $4.9 billion.

Advocates for accessibility in public transit told the Sun-Times they know there are limitations to modernizing a transit system that is more than a century old, but some said the 20-year timeline shows that accessibility is not the city’s top priority.

“Think about the things we spend money on. The Jane Byrne interchange has been rebuilt twice in the time I’ve been in Chicago,” said W. Robert Schultz III, a campaign organizer with the Active Transportation Alliance.

Financing is the biggest challenge

The new price tag of $4.98 billion represents a staggering 137% increase in the cost of making all CTA stations accessible, up from the original estimate of $2.1 billion released in 2018.

“This is something you see broadly across the construction industry; it’s not just affecting CTA projects,” said CTA spokeswoman Catherine Hosinski, attributing the increase to rising labor and material costs.

In a follow-up email to the Sun-Times, Hosinski acknowledged that “funding has been and remains the biggest challenge.” The CTA needs state and federal funding and needs the City Council’s support to “change an outdated funding formula supported by stagnant, less viable funding sources.”

The CTA has divided its ASAP plan into four phases over 20 years. None of the eight stations targeted for improvements in Phase 1 have been completed, although it expects them to be completed by 2027, it said in a news release. The CTA said it has fully funded the $423.5 million cost of those projects.

Phase 2, which is expected to cost $617.5 million, is almost half funded, according to CTA. No funds have been allocated for Phases 3 and 4.

The CTA has had some success in obtaining federal grants.

In 2021, Congress passed the All Stations Accessibility Act, which provides $10 billion over 10 years to improve accessibility in transportation systems across the country. U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois) was a lead sponsor of the bill, named after the CTA program.

The CTA received $118 million in grants to upgrade Irving Park, Belmont and Pulaski stations as part of the program for its 2022-23 budget. However, the CTA was not among the eight agencies that received $343 million in grants for fiscal year 2024.

Rich Hein / Sun-Times File

North Side Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th) has been a frequent critic of the CTA and President Dorval Carter Jr.

Vasquez said the skyrocketing costs of transforming the CTA into the nation’s “first fully accessible public transit system” underscore the need for comprehensive public transit reform, which Carter has rejected.

“All of this makes the conversations about consolidating agencies — Metra, CTA, (RTA) and Pace — even more important,” Vasquez said. “If you were more involved — if the state, county and city agreed — it would be easier to lobby for more federal money to get these things done.”

The root of the problem lies deep

Accessibility advocates have been pressuring the CTA since the 1980s.

Ervin, the wheelchair user who lives on Printers Row, co-founded the group Adapt Chicago, which sued the CTA and organized protests for the installation of lifts on city buses.

Ervin and his colleagues climbed onto buses without elevators to slow them down and make a point. Some of them were arrested. The group won, and soon all city buses were equipped with elevators. Then-Mayor Harold Washington appointed a person with disabilities to the CTA board.

Despite this representation, progress was slow due to a lack of planning years ago. When the ADA was passed in 1990, only 10% of CTA stations were handicap accessible.

CTA’s ASAP Plan, revised in 2024

“The decisions that got us where we are today were made decades ago when stations were built without elevators,” says Kevin Irvine, a former CTA board member who advocates for accessibility in public transit.

Most of the stations that are currently not barrier-free are on the blue and red lines. The pink and orange lines, built after 1990, were designed to be barrier-free.

Irvine, the former CTA board member, said the revised plan shows the transit agency’s commitment to accessibility and dismissed criticism of the progress.

“The fact that not all of the Phase 1 stations have been completed is not a failure, as this is an ongoing project,” Irvine said. “It is unrealistic to expect that a schedule in a written plan from 2018 will not need to be adjusted over time.”

Rene David Luna, a wheelchair user who protested for accessible CTA buses in the 1980s, said he realized that modernizing the elevators would not happen overnight.

“More than 30 years after the ADA was passed, there are still many inaccessible stations. Even in those that are accessible, some of the equipment doesn’t work properly,” Luna said.

Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun Times

Old transport system

Despite a lack of progress, Chicago is miles ahead of other cities with outdated transportation systems.

More than 70 percent of New York City’s subway stations are not accessible, compared to 30 percent in Chicago. The city’s subway system is expected to be 95 percent accessible by 2055.

Bridget Hayman of the advocacy group Access Living said she moved to Chicago because of its easy access to public transportation.

“The CTA has always excelled nationally when it comes to improving accessibility on buses,” she said.

Part of the challenge is getting to the bus or train station at all, she said. Some sidewalks need to be repaired or cleared of snow.

“If you can’t make it to the bus stop, you can’t ride the bus,” she said.

Laura Salzman, transportation policy analyst at Access Living and a member of the CTA’s ADA Advisory Board, said accessible transportation includes more than just elevators.

The CTA is also installing Braille on bus stop signs and improving the readability of the signs for people with cognitive and developmental disabilities. The improvements will also help people who do not speak English.

“It’s one of the less glamorous parts. It’s not a big elevator, but it’s a thing that helps people get around,” Salzman said.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Mike Ervin’s last name.