Elevator Entrapment In Brooklyn Renews Focus On Subway Accessibility

BROOKLYN, NY— Three people were trapped inside a subway elevator for about 20 minutes at the Flushing Avenue J/M station in Brooklyn on Tuesday.

The incident happened around 1:42 p.m. at the Bedford-Stuyvesant station, according to the Fire Department of the City of New York.

Subscribe

FDNY responded to the scene and removed the passengers from the elevator.

The department reported the incident was closed at 2 p.m.

The FDNY reported the cause of the malfunction remains under investigation.

“Whenever an unplanned outage occurs an investigation is performed and corrective action is taken, as was the case with the outage at Flushing,” MTA spokesperson Michael Cortez told Patch in a statement.

The MTA reported subway elevators have maintained a 97 percent availability rate systemwide year to date.

The three elevators serving the Flushing Avenue station have the same availability rate, Cortez said.

Elevators receive preventive maintenance every month and undergo inspections at least twice each year, according to the MTA.

Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director for the Riders Alliance, said elevators are essential because many subway riders cannot use stairs, yet the system remains inaccessible at many stations.

“No system is going to be flawless or perfect,”Pearlstein said. “But in addition to installing new elevators, this incident really demonstrates the need for preventive maintenance of the existing ones.”

Elevator maintenance can be more complex than other station infrastructure because of the number of mechanical components involved, he said.

“There’s a lot more moving parts in an elevator than a staircase,” he said. “As we're investing in new construction, we all still have to invest in care for the existing infrastructure.”

A video posted four weeks ago shows an elevator entrapment at the F train’s 6 Av local Queens-bound stop, capturing the incident as riders were stuck inside the station elevator.

In a federal case brought by disability advocates, plaintiffs argued that elevator maintenance, outage notifications and alternative transportation options did not adequately serve riders affected by outages.

A federal judge in 2024 declined to grant the MTA’s renewed request for summary judgment, finding that questions remained about the timeliness and accuracy of outage notifications and whether accommodations provided during elevator failures were reasonable.

The MTA said it continues working with plaintiffs to resolve those issues.

Previous elevator failures have drawn attention to the impact of outages on riders.

At the Clark Street station in Brooklyn, newly installed elevators failed multiple times after a major replacement project in 2023, including an incident where firefighters rescued 21 passengers and a dog from a stalled elevator.

Transit officials have said elevator reliability has improved, but acknowledged that a single failure can have a major impact on the riders who experience it.

“If you’re a customer who was in that 1% when [an elevator] wasn’t available, the statistics don’t matter,” former New York City Transit President Richard Davey told the City Reporter in 2023. “We get that and are focused on that.”

The MTA said the Flushing Avenue elevator will remain under review as officials determine what caused the failure and whether repairs or additional action are needed.