Research
Accessibility Research Lab
Independent annual research on how accessible US public transit is for wheelchair users. Each report uses agency data, publishes its method in full, and is free to read.
Publications
Rail Stations With Only One Elevator, 2026
Stations in Washington, Boston, and the Bay Area where the agency lists a single elevator, so one outage leaves no second elevator to use.
Wheelchair Access Across US Rail Systems, 2026
The share of stations a wheelchair user can reach from street to train, for every US subway and light rail system.
Elevator Reliability on US Rail
How often station elevators are out of service, measured from a year of our own outage records in the cities we track.
About
The lab is the research side of Is the elevator working?, a free live map of transit elevator outages. The map answers whether a station works today. The lab asks how the systems compare, and how that changes year to year.
Questions about the data, corrections, press, or working together: write to editors at istheelevatorworking dot com.
- Agency data only
- Results come from what transit agencies publish themselves: schedule feeds, open data, and official statements. Never third-party sources or estimates.
- One published method
- Each report states its rules before its results, and applies them the same way to every system. The station-level data is free to download.
- Independent
- Free to read, with no paywall. No sponsor, advertiser, or agency can change a result or a rank.
- Annual
- Each series is published once a year. Past editions stay online, changed only for dated corrections, so results can be compared over time.