Home Asides ‘An escalator is never temporarily out order; it’s temporarily stairs’

‘An escalator is never temporarily out order; it’s temporarily stairs’

by Benjamin Kabak

Borrowing a line from Mitch Hedberg, Gary Reilly at Brooklyn Streets, Carroll Gardens rants on the recent spate of broken escalators feeding into and out of subway stations around New York. Over the last few weeks, both amNew York and Cubed (via amNew York) have noted the sheer inanity of leaving escalators out of order for years at a time.

Oftentimes, as is the case at Union Square, the maintenance responsibilities for these escalators are in the hands of the owners of the buildings that house subway entrances, and these landlords opt not to shell out the expenses. The MTA, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to pressure these landlords into keeping the terms of the real estate deals, and the escalators are allowed to languish unused and out of order. What a mess. [Brooklyn Streets, Carroll Gardens]

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