Last August, New York City Transit installed motion-sensitive “green” escalators to much fanfare. On the first day of service, some of them had already broken down, and it’s been nothing but trouble for Transit since then. As both amNew York and WCBS TV reported on this week, Transit is having a hard time getting its contractor to make good on its product.
In a nutshell, here’s what happened: The MTA spent $36 million to replace Herald Square’s 12 escalators. Fujitec America, the contractor, supposedly did not install the escalators properly, and now that the company is out of the heavy-duty escalator comapny, they haven’t been quick to make repairs. “The escalators are under warranty and while the vendor has made some of the required repairs, they have not done so at the pace we would have liked,” Transit spokesman Paul Fleurangs told CBS 2.
NYC Transit President Howard Roberts echoed Fleuranges. “We respond as quickly as possible in house,” he said during a board meeting. “But we have little leverage with our current contracts to get warranty repairs made.” I’d love to see the terms of that escalator installation contract because it sounds like some deal for Fujitec.
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That’s the problem with these low-bid contracts. While the rest of the world uses either Schindler or Otis elevators and escalators, these guys go with low-bid companies who can’t make a working product and then can’t support them. (But on the flip-side, when budgets are tight, as they seemingly always are, it’s hard to justify spending more for a “brand name” product)
Well, this situation shows that it’s not so hard at all. You get what you pay for.
What a shame; I saw these Fujitec escalators for the first time at the Vancouver airport several years ago and they are quite cool. The effect as they creep and then wake up is very futuristic. I go there frequenty for work and have never seen them out of service as frequently as the junk escalators at Newark airport, e.g. Maybe the product isn’t suited for as hardcore an application as the NYC subway, but something tells me the MTA is not blameless.
But Fujitec America’s site still shows escalators as their main product…? And yeah, honestly MTA should have gone with a better contractor. Low price=good but if quality is sacrificed…
I saw that too. Perhaps it’s a volume issue. They don’t service elevators that are as abused as the ones in Herald Square.