MinuteMap
How MinuteMap Measures Transit Accessibility
MinuteMap models stations, schedules, transfers, trains, elevators, walking links, outages, uncertainty, and multimodal alternatives to compare ordinary and step-free journeys.
Direct Answer
MinuteMap calculates the ordinary and verified step-free journey with the same time model, then reports accessible duration minus ordinary duration as the Accessibility Time Penalty.
Step-free routing
The accessible search removes an entrance, platform, transfer, or ride edge when its required step-free evidence is missing or a matched elevator dependency is unavailable.
Transfers and walking assumptions
Transfers are directed and costed. Short surface connections use official stop coordinates and remain labeled as modeled when MinuteMap cannot verify the sidewalk-to-platform path.
Schedules and live service
Scheduled ride time comes from active official GTFS trips. Matched realtime departures and alerts are shown separately instead of replacing the underlying schedule without attribution.
Elevator dependencies and outages
Equipment is joined through official stop, complex, and equipment identifiers. An outage closes only the path that depends on that equipment; an unrelated elevator is not assumed to be a substitute.
Accessibility classifications
Full, partial, directional, and unavailable classifications remain distinct. Partial access is never promoted to full access, and ambiguous directional evidence fails closed.
Multimodal alternatives
When subway-only routing fails, the same constrained search can consider buses, LIRR, Metro-North, ferries, and short walks while checking every handoff. Bus recovery can validate an official stop, ordered direction, and published call; it does not prove a low-floor vehicle, curb, sidewalk, or boarding path.
Incomplete data and uncertainty
Unknown evidence is not treated as access. Results disclose scheduled, live, cached, computed, estimated, and unavailable inputs independently.
Blast radius
Blast radius estimates how many origin-destination opportunities depend on an accessible station or equipment path; it is a modeled network effect, not a passenger count.
Stale-data handling
A bounded last-known-good cache is labeled. Once evidence is too stale to support a current accessibility claim, live step-free verification fails closed.
Limitations
Official feeds do not yet provide a continuously verified sidewalk-to-platform pathway for every curb, entrance, landing, and transfer. MinuteMap labels that boundary where it affects a result.
Last Updated
Methodology version v3 · September 7, 2026
Data timestamps
- Source retrieval time
- 2026-10-17T00:50:26.588Z
- Station manifest generation time
- 2026-10-17T00:50:34.845Z
- Page generation time
- 2026-10-17T01:13:10.487Z
- Live elevator/status check time
- Not checked in this HTML response. The interactive view retrieves and labels current evidence separately.
Station inventory is static source data. A feed version date is not a retrieval time.
MinuteMap is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the MTA.