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NYTimes: $1 Billion Later, Subway Elevators Still Fail

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From the front page of today’s New York Times comes a scathing indictment of the city’s complete and total mishandling of its subway elevators and escalators.

The Times spent months investigating the broken system, including where the money was spent, and who oversaw the spending. The paper conducted dozens of interviews, reviewed thousands of pages of documents from the past 10 years. It tracked breakdowns, repair calls, and maintenance for every escalator and elevator in the system.

Since the early 1990s, New York has spent close to $1 b-b-b-billion to install more than 200 new elevators and escalators. It plans to spend a similar amount through the end of the next decade.

And what did New York taxpapers get for their money?

One of every six elevators and escalators in the subway system was out of service for more than a month last year, according to the transit agency’s data.

The 169 escalators in the subway averaged 68 breakdowns or repair calls each last year, with the worst machines logging more than double that number. And some of the least reliable escalators in the system are also some of the newest, accumulating thousands of hours out of service for what officials described as a litany of mechanical flaws.

Two-thirds of the subway elevators — many of which travel all of 15 feet — had at least one breakdown last year in which passengers were trapped inside.

The article examines why the system is so hopelessly broken, in what it terms a “portrait of startling shortcomings.”

The more than 200 mechanics who maintain and repair the subway’s elevators and escalators receive as little as four weeks of training, a fraction of what they would receive in other transit systems or in private industry. And transit officials concede the system is so inefficient that many elevator and escalator mechanics spend barely half of their shifts actually working on troubled machines.

Managers often rush balky elevators and escalators back into service without identifying the underlying causes of mechanical problems, leading to more breakdowns.

Many problems occur because of basic design flaws or mistakes made during the construction of the machines, when contractors worked with little or no oversight. Those conditions left many of the machines virtually broken from the outset.

$1 billion? What the hell is going on here? This is “the city that never sleeps.” The most populous city in the U.S., with a metropolitan area (and tax base) ranking among the largest urban areas in the world. A major center of international commerce, finance, media, politics, education, entertainment, arts, fashion and advertising.

The city that, over the last 100 years, gave us the Empire State Building, one of the most famous skyscrapers on earth; the Chrysler Building, opened in 1933, the first structure in the world to surpass the 1,000 foot threshold; the GE Building, the seventh tallest building in New York and the 30th tallest in the U.S; the MetLife Building, the largest commercial office building in the world when it opened; the Seagram Building, one of the most important buildings in modern architecture; the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, the city’s tallest buildings from 1973 to 2001; Citigroup Center, considered one of the most important post-war skyscrapers to be in erected in New York City; Hearst Tower, the city’s first new energy-efficient tower; the Condé Nast Building, one of the most important examples of green design in skyscrapers in the United States.

$1 billion? One of every six elevators and escalators in the subway system are out of service for more than a month? 169 subway escalators average 68 breakdowns or repair calls? Some of the least reliable escalators in the system are some of the newest? Two-thirds of the subway elevators have at least one breakdown per year with people trapped inside?

It’s almost as if the higher you go, the more brilliant and breathtaking. The lower, the more incompetent.

What is it like to be stuck inside one of these broken down elevators? A New York Times reader, Dave, left the following comment:

I was trapped in a 168th St. elevator a couple of years ago, and it was a frightening experience. The temperature in the elevator was easily 90 degrees and the cab was so full of commuters that sitting down would have been difficult. Fortunately, the elevator reset itself and creeped back down to the original floor after a couple of minutes. The managers and mechanics who oversee these elevators and escalators really need to be held accountable for their incompetence. Those responsible for the egregious accidents should be prosecuted for negligence.

This is what we mean by commuter outrage. Somebody should be shot over this.

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