A 2019 settlement mandated the city Department of Transportation to survey and fix any street that didn’t have adequate access for sidewalk ramps at every corner. Believe it or not, the city blames the quarantine, when no one was out interfering in transportation construction. That was 3 years ago

The discovery of ramp-free locations that were not previously identified, along with pandemic-driven construction delays, officials say, have combined to push back the completion dates agreed to in a 2019 settlement. Two class-action lawsuits had charged the city with not making streets and sidewalks accessible to people with disabilities, a condition the city may not be able to fulfill for years.

The delays are spelled out in the Department of Transportation’s July “transition plan,” which details how the agency has completed a survey of 217,678 pedestrian ramps at approximately 134,000 corners in the city. There are approximately 185,000 corners citywide, according to an August progress report of the pedestrian ramp program.

A little more than 40,000 ramps have been revamped or installed.

Several disability rights organizations sued the city in 1994 and again in 2014 over sidewalk ramps that were missing, inaccessible or lacking tactile warning surfaces for people with visual impairments.

As part of the settlement just four years ago, the DOT says it used high definition, street-level imagery and mobile light-detection and ranging technology to survey every street corner and determine which ones need curb cuts installed or repaired.

But DOT records show that the survey, completed in October 2019, also turned up additional locations that lacked ramps but were not on the agency’s list of known corners

New York City’s commitments to accessibility upgrades are also lagging in other cases. THE CITY reported last month that the Taxi and Limousine Commission missed a June 30 deadline for making half of the 13,587 yellow taxis accessible to wheelchair users — after initially blowing a 2020 deadline set nearly a decade earlier.

https://www.thecity.nyc/2023/10/12/23913434/city-moving-slow-on-curb-ramps-at-every-corner