Disability advocates are pushing the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to speed up reimbursements to riders who use alternative transportation options as part of the Access-A-Ride program, a service that provides door-to-door transportation for those with disabilities.
Riders and advocates charge that what used to take a month now takes at least four.
“I am owed from January 31,” said Michael Ring, a Brooklynite and member of the advocacy group Disabled In Action. He said he uses Access-A-Ride because of his Guillain-Barre Syndrome, an autoimmune disorder.
Through the advanced authorization taxicab reimbursement program, more than 200,000 paratransit participants are able to take trips in taxis or for-hire vehicles booked through apps like Uber or Lyft and be compensated later by the MTA.
Riders still have to get approval ahead of time for the day that they’d like to travel, but unlike many other Access-A-Ride services, they don’t have to schedule the ride for an exact time. The program provided rides for over 80,000 riders in April 2026, according to MTA data. The problem is, reimbursements are taking months to arrive.
Ring said the MTA owes him over $1,000 for trips he took since February.
The MTA is touting an Access-A-Ride revival after a year of record ridership and reliability. October 2025 marked the first month in the service's history with more than 1 million trips taken, while driver no-shows dropped to fewer than one per 1,000 trips.
Despite the MTA making improvements to the service after many years of issues with no-show pick-ups, a lack of flexibility clouds the service. Most programs require users to schedule their rides down to a 30-minute window a day ahead of time, pushing many riders to the taxicab reimbursement program for a solution, according to riders.
The program lets riders call taxicabs or for–hire drivers to travel within the same borough or to a transit hub. Riders cover the up-front price of the ride, but once they submit a receipt to the MTA — and if it is accepted — they are reimbursed for the full fare, including up to a 15% tip and any tolls, minus the fare required for any form of Access-a-Ride transit, which reflects what riders pay for the subway or bus.
Oleg Kleyman, a Brooklynite who uses Access-a-Ride because of his multiple sclerosis and fatigue, said he likes the program because it allows him more flexibility. However, he’s owed a little over $100 for trips he took since January.
The taxi authorization program exists because of Access-a-Ride’s inability to meet all of the needs of people with disabilities, according to Evan Yankey, the advocacy director for the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled. Taxi authorizations are also offered to riders when their scheduled Access-a-Ride doesn’t arrive within a 30-minute window of when it’s supposed to.
“People are left in this situation where they’re stranded somewhere,” said Yankey. “They’ve had to make a decision to spend their own money on a taxi authorization.”
Claudia Mallea, a resident of Windsor Terrace who’s been using Access-a-Ride since 2022, said that over the past couple of months, she has consistently gotten stuck at a weekly appointment in Downtown Brooklyn. She said it would be better if she could use the taxicab reimbursement program to get home, but it would cost her $25 to $30 to do so.
“It does not seem like a good financial decision to just be waiting for 30 bucks for however long, regularly,” she said. “Knowing that I'm going to be waiting longer than a month really keeps me from using something that would be beneficial for my life.”
The MTA said they were aware of the problem. “The turnaround time for taxi reimbursement requests increased significantly in the early months of 2026 due to high volumes and technology transitions,” Rachel Cohen, MTA Senior Vice President of Paratransit said in a statement. “We are aware of the current backlog and are working to reduce turnaround times to roughly 60 days by making improvements to staff training, technology upgrades, and better customer-facing messaging.”
