Day: July 23, 2026

The MTA completed its work to make Brooklyn’s Borough Hall subway hub accessible for disabled riders by adding new elevators to the station — a project that had been drawn out over several years due to structural updates agency officials said it needed.

Janno Lieber, the MTA’s chair and CEO, stood with other local leaders on July 22 to cut the ribbon on three new elevators the agency recently finished installing in the portion of the station serving the 4 and 5 trains. One of the new elevators connects street level to the mezzanine, while the other two connect to the Manhattan-bound and Brooklyn-bound sides of the platform.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, in a statement, said the new elevators finally make the hub — where riders can also catch the 2, 3, and R trains — accessible to everyone.

“Borough Hall is a vital connection to all that Downtown Brooklyn has to offer, but for too long, this transit hub was not accessible to all; today, that finally changes,” Hochul said.

Lieber said the project, which broke ground in 2023, took 3 1/2 years to complete because the MTA had to reconstruct the station’s entire over 100-year-old ceiling to fix structural problems brought on by age and water damage.

“We had to redo the whole structure of what’s underneath us,” Lieber said, during the ribbon-cutting ceremony outside the station on Joralemon Street.

“That, while we’re still trying to run trains, was a pretty arduous exercise,” he continued. “So I totally get that people felt like there was a lot of construction going at the street level for a long time.”

The transit boss was responding to a reporter who questioned the project’s timeline. He cited commuters whom he spoke with at the station who vented frustration over how long it took the MTA to complete construction.

A failure of waterproofing in the station’s ceiling led to a collapse over the train in 2018, said Jamie Torres-Springer, president of MTA Construction and Development.

“It has been left to deteriorate over 118 years, frankly, so it was in terrible shape,” Torres-Springer said.

Brooklyn Borough President praises MTA for upgrades

However, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who was also present at the announcement, stood behind the MTA’s timeline for the project. The beep noted that it takes the agency time to do the kinds of long-term structural fixes the system needs correctly.

“I want to have the MTA’s back here,” Reynoso said. “If we want to start solving for these problems in real ways, that speak to climate change, that speak to long-term deliverables for ADA (the Americans with Disabilities Act), we’re going to have to do it right. And doing it right took three years.”

The MTA made other structural fixes to the station as well, including upgrades to waterproofing, lighting, drainage, plumbing, fire alarms, and communications systems. The agency is also restoring and reinstalling 1,000 square feet of mosaic tiles that have adorned the station walls since it opened as an Interborough Rapid Transit Company stop in 1908, and is rehabilitating every one of the station’s staircases.

Other accessibility upgrades the MTA made include redesigned platform edges with tactile strips and new boarding areas for wheelchair users, according to the agency.

Lieber said the MTA has completed elevator installations at nine stations so far this year.

The transit authority has made 34 stations accessible since 2021, with 160 stations now accessible, it said. It is actively working on making an additional 34 accessible as well.

The MTA has significantly accelerated its efforts to make more of the subway system accessible since settling a lawsuit in 2023 with several disability advocacy groups. The action sought to force the agency to make far more stations accessible under the ADA.

“It has been 36 years, almost to the day, since the law that demands accessibility and public accommodations was passed,” Lieber said. “This is some long overdue transit justice.”