A year and bit more ago I created this thread about the little escalator at the top of the E/V train station at 52rd & 3rd Ave that’s never in working order.
By sheer coincidence (I assume?), they dusted off its gears and actually had it running for an unprecedented couple weeks.
Well, that was then, and then was a year ago. Hasn’t budged since.
Now, I could walk that distance. (Good thing, since I do so coming and going damn near every weekday). This is not about “oh pity me, the escalator is broken and I hafta climb stairs”. It’s about the fact that at 8:30 in the morning when I’m trying to get down into that station, commuters from Queens and Long Island are boiling up the narrow twin staircases. And if they didn’t have this perpetually broken escalator blocked off we could be using it as a 3rd set of steps, as we did back in '05 or thereabouts. But no, they have to pretend that Any Day Now they’re going to actually fix this thing, so it has construction barriers. Very dusty and rain-splashed and forlorn-looking construction barriers, to be sure, but still official notice that they don’t want us using the stairs. I should just shove them out of the way so we can use the escalator like a flight of stairs, shouldn’t I?
Or given that it’s the one year anniversary of the last time these little metal steps moved, I should call someone. Tell them how annoying it is to have that piece of crap taking up 1/3 of the available space and forcing us to dive pell-mell into the hordes of the upward bound and parry elbows with knees. Ask them just how long it takes to fix one lousy goddam escalator. (The huge one downstairs, the one that’s about 4 office floors tall, is currently under repair. But they’re actually repairing it — they’ll have it back before the end of June. They’ve done it before. It’s just this one they can’t seem to get fixed).
Meh… can’t seem to work up much vitriol this year.
“I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an escalator temporarily out of order sign, only an escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.”
You know, if they didn’t block it off I wouldn’t care. When the escalators at 181st broke for months they left them open so you could climb them like normal stairs. You know what would be even better than working escalators though? If they would quit fucking shutting down the A train above 168th every weekend. I love the trains so much and I don’t mind walking a couple of blocks to the 1 train but jeezaloo, is there really so much wrong with it that the train has been shut down every damn weekend? Still, it is a small price to pay for fantastic public transportation I suppose.
That made me chuckle when you started off your rant about people thinking you might be lazy for complaining about an escalator not working. Some jokers might, but when I see something that costs that much money, built for the public, that doesn’t work, it makes me think “What boob is in charge of that thing?”.
In Las Vegas we have a monorail system that runs down on the strip and every time it breaks down It makes the local news.One of the reporters did some checking and found out that it was made by Bombardier, the guys that make jet skis and snowmobiles. Needless to say their sales dropped off a little bit locally.
I use the escalators at the Lexington Ave end daily. Very narrow, crowded platform, but the three escalators there were working. The two at the end were going up, the one a little off from the end was going down. This was at 7:50a this morning. Don’t follow what’s happening at the 3rd Ave end though.
The escalator on the right at the Lex Ave exit (as you are exiting) was recently completely rebuilt after a breakdown. I haven’t seen any downtime since, but I only encounter the escalator about 30 seconds twice a day.
Hate to break it to you, but I finally figured out that the “track work and repairs somewhere on every single line every f*cking weekend for the last couple of years” is just a way to reduce service without actually admitting they’re reducing service.
Case it point: Crown Heights to Wall (3 and 2 stops, 2 train lines) which takes 45 minutes usually, took 1 hour and 45 minutes one weekend, with a tour of West 4th Street I did not ask for.
Yeah, the long long long escalator receives pretty effective attention when it goes down. Rightfully so. And as pbbth points out, the similarly long long long escalators at 181st don’t get neglected either. (Hey, pbbth, are you stalking me? That’s the other end of my daily commute!)
The perpetually-broken one is a relatively short little thang. The overcrowded twin stairwells next to them are broken up into about 3 sections of perhaps 12-15 steps apiece with short landings, if that gives you an idea. (You can see the far end in the photo linked in OP).
I am not stalking you, AHunter3, I promise! It appears we may live very close to one another though, depending on if you live downtown and commute north or live uptown and commute south.
Have you considered giving it an anniversary bunch of balloons? Possibly with an anniversary poster? A picture of the three together could be sent to a local newspaper, just on the off chance that whimsy is news.
I think that is the best idea ever, in the history of mankind. Make sure to attach a little card to the balloons, like “Congratulations on your fourth anniversary of never working.” or something.
