MTA IG: Privately-owned escalators not monitored properly

In Washington, DC, escalators that bring passengers up from the depths of the Metro caverns are seemingly a necessity. No one wants to hike up the 204 feet from the platform at Woodley Park to Connecticut Ave. at street level. Yet, these escalators are often plagued by outages as one or another break down frequently. In New York, it’s much the same story.

Over the years, the MTA has had a love-hate relationship with their escalators (and elevators too). They love to build them and tote their usefulness, but they hate to oversee the repair process. Creaky elevators get stuck; escalators — never broken because they just become stairs — wind up in the purgatory of the repair process; and even staircases are somehow out of service for longer than they should be.

Even worse, according to a report published today, are the escalators and elevators that lead into MTA areas but are controlled by private owners. Throughout the system, there are 23 privately-owned escalators and 10 elevators that serve 13 stations throughout Manhattan and Queens, and although the owners are contractually obligated to maintain these access points, according to the MTA Inspector General, the MTA often fails to notify owners of outages and does not enforce these obligations. In one case, in fact, the MTA waited nearly three years to notify a property owner of an escalator outage.

According to Barry Kluger’s report, the problem is one that often plagues large bureaucracies. “No one individual or department within the MTA or NYC Transit has overall responsibility for ensuring compliance with easement agreements,” he wrote. “Each seems to minimize its responsibility and role. This apparent void in leadership and oversight has led to inadequate agency practices and procedures.”

Essentially, the problem is one of oversight. The agreements between the MTA and the private owners require the owners to maintain their escalators and elevators upon notice from the MTA. Yet, no one person at the MTA is in charge of giving that notice, and numerous departments have tried to pass along these duties to others. As Kluger relates, the Transit Elevator & Escalator Department, the Transit Station Environment Department, the MTA Real Estate Department, the MTA General Counsel, the Transit Department of Law and the Transit Office of Government & Community Relations all have responsibilities in the field, but none have sole ownership of the issue. There is no shared list of out-of-system egress points, and there is no efficient system for sharing information related to outages.

Thus, when the escalator at the 53rd St. station on the East Side went out in September of 2008, it took until April of 2011, after countless articles and news stories, for the MTA to inform the property owners of the outage. This, says, Kluger is a process that needs to change. “MTA and NYC Transit must work cooperatively and creatively to resolve out of system property issues expeditiously, utilizing all appropriate tools at their disposal, including self-help, and leveraging New York City partnerships and resources, for the benefit of the riders.”

To solve this problem, Kluger issued a series of rather simple recommendations. The authority must report these private-property outages on its website, and it must pick one lead department which will be in charge of enforcing maintenance agreements. The agency should also report quarterly statistic to the MTA Board so that the board and public are informed of the state of repairs. For its part, the authority accepted these recommendations and appointed the Real Estate department to head up all enforcement and maintenance efforts with regards to these privately-owned escalators and elevators.

Still, Kluger had strong words for the MTA in his report, and the authority will have to show that these internal changes are leading to actual improvements. “The public has been seriously disserved by the inordinate amount of time that privately-owned and maintained escalators, which help move passengers at some of the busiest stations in New York City, have been out of service,” he said. “While this disservice is largely the result of private owners not meeting their obligations, a share of the fault belongs to the MTA and NYC Transit, which
have not effectively managed their own responsibilities regarding this ‘out of system’ equipment.”