Krueger Is Pressing MTA, Lenox Hill Hospital for Two Subway Elevators on 6 Train/77th St.
The 77th Street station of the 6 line has an elevator but only on the southbound side. State Senator Krueger is urging a second, uptown elevator as Northwell Health prepares to undertake a 10-year, $2-billion reconstruction of Lenox Hill Hospital.
| 10 Oct 2025 | 12:03
The success of a year-old elevator installed, with the help of a construction exemption, at the Hunter College stop (above) has inspired State Senator Liz Krueger to seek an elevator she would like a developer and the MTA to build as part of Lenox Hill Hospital’s 10-year reconstruction. (
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MTA Chief Accessibility Officer Quemuel Arroyo, above, is one of the 1 million mobility-challenged New Yorkers who use city subways and buses. A paraplegic since he was 18 years ago, Arroyo is an important voice in the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s decision-making. (
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In front of the elevator for the 68th Street-Hunter College Station, MTA Chief Accessibility Officer Quemuel Arroyo talks mobility with State Senator Liz Krueger, whose East District has many who depend on step-free transit travel. (
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Baby strollers pose another kind of mobility issue. MTA policy dictates that strollers must be folded on buses, but the rule is not enforced. Here a stroller takes up three seats, needed for other riders. A hundred new NYC Transit buses are on order with stroller zones to alleviate this problem. (
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Once elevator-riding subway riders at the 68th Street-Hunter College come down from the street, they need to alight at the mezzanine level to pay their fares, and then take a second elevator to the subway level. New MTA subway station redesigns will better accommodate those riders by using only one surface-to-platform elevator, eliminating the intermediate stop. (
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The $2-billion Lenox Hill Hospital rebuild hasn’t begun yet, but State Senator Liz Krueger is already getting ready to press the MTA and the Northwell Health Group to install two elevators at the 6 line subway stop adjacent to the hospital on East 77th Street and Lexington Avenue, one for uptown, one for downtown.
The Lenox Hill Hospital redevelopment plan, which only recently cleared the Planning Commission, calls for a total remake of the hospital campus stretched out over 10 years. Right now, however, those plans call for only one elevator to connect to the downtown/southbound side of the local 6 train stop.
That’s why Krueger is pushing, before anyone breaks ground, to include two elevator shafts in the rebuild, one that would connect with the uptown side and one with the downtown side.
“Northwell only committed to installing an elevator on the southbound side of the 6 train, and there is no way to cross over from southbound to northbound below ground, so the community also wants Northwell to pay for the elevator on the northbound side as well,” said Justin Flagg, a spokesperson for Krueger. “And since the hospital has a 10-year timeline for the project, Senator Krueger wants the MTA to push for the elevator agreed to on the southbound side to be done at the beginning of the construction process, not a decade later.”
The idea to press for the elevator came to Krueger after a recent meeting with the MTA’s chief accessibility officer, Quemuel Arroyo, on a day when he was highlighting some recent successes the MTA has had in getting elevators up and running to make stations more accessible to everyone. His first stop that morning was the new elevator that went into operation in Woodside, Queens, after years of delay.
For Arroyo, pushing for more accessibility is not just a bureaucratic pursuit. When he was only 18 years old, he suffered a tragic accident that left him a quadriplegic. Aside from wheelchairs, mobility challenges can include everyone from a mom or nanny with a sleeping baby in a stroller, to someone walking with a cane.
After the dedication ceremony, Arroyo traveled to the corner of 68th and Lexington to speak with a tiny group including Krueger and Our Town. The location was across the street from the less-than-one-year-old subway elevator at the northeast corner, a 10-year project that Arroyo had envisioned when he was with the New York State Department of Transportation and saw to its fruition at the MTA.
Hunter College staff and students wanted the elevator and got it, he noted. It was placed across the street from Hunter due to the lack of usable space on the west side of Lexington, by the college.
Asked how many people actually depend on the MTA elevators, the chief accessibility officer estimated that it was as many as two out five riders, which included wheelchairs, strollers, and people with canes and walkers, e-bikes and other conveyances.
“Don’t forget we had 65 million visitors to NYC last year, in addition to the million in NYC that are disabled, and some of them also depended on transit accessibility to get around,” he mentioned.
As he gazed across 68th Street, Arroyo noted, “I’ve watched four mobility-challenged people use the [Hunter College] elevator across the street in 20 minutes.”
For those needing help getting on NYC Transit‘s mix of subways, buses and paratransit for riders will be getting even better. Funding through the 2025-29 MTA Capital Plan will provide $100 million for new buses with a designated stroller area, currently an issue for many bus riders having to navigate an obstacle course to get on or off. Another innovation? Unlike the elevator across the street from Hunter, which only goes to the fare-collection floor, and then another to the platform, new elevators from street to platform are being installed at new subway accessibility projects; they cut out the use of two separate elevators.
Senator Krueger listened attentively. After Arroyo was finished, she noted that the easement certification for subway elevators would work very well with the new Lenox Hill Hospital construction at 77th Street, slated to be completed in 2034. Arroyo said that he would submit the idea to the MTA.