The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) unveiled the first electric vehicles to join the Access-A-Ride paratransit fleet.

The pilot, which includes 15 Ford electric vans and costs approximately $3 million, will begin making trips throughout the five boroughs today.

“Between this electric vehicle and the wheelchair securement system we debuted last year, our customers are seeing constant improvements being made to Access-A-Ride,” said MTA New York City Transit Vice President of Paratransit Chris Pangilinan. “And that shows in the growth of our customer satisfaction, which hit a record high of 79% in March 2024 as ridership grew 15.3% compared to March 2023, with most days above pre-COVID levels.”

MTA’s Paratransit Ridership Growth

Last month, Access-A-Ride set an all-time record for booked trips for a seven-day period. Between March 8 and March 14, Access-A-Ride recorded a record 213,512 booked trips. The record high included 36,469 booked trips for March 13 alone.

The booked trips high builds on a strong 2023 in which Access-A-Ride saw on-time performance at an all-time high and wait times plummet. Booked trips on an average weekday have increased from 31,500 per day to 33,800 per day in March.

Between July 2023 and March 2024, MTA Paratransit cut its call answer times from 50 seconds down to 15.

In October 2023, 20 new Ford E-450 vans joined the Access-A-Ride fleet, including one van testing a new wheelchair securement system, which includes an improved yellow visual design to quickly and safely secure customers using wheelchairs, another step toward modernizing the system and making it more customer friendly.