125th St. Escalators: A Transit Shutdown of Another Kind

125th St. Escalators: A Transit Shutdown of Another Kind
By Anna Phillips
Spectator Staff Writer

January 17, 2006

For many residents of Morningside Heights and West Harlem, the escalators at the 125th Street subway station are a joke they have long stopped laughing at.

Built in 1904, the above-ground station has been a focus of community activism for decades due to its ancient trestle and unreliable escalators�a particularly pressing issue in a community with many senior citizens and disabled residents.

�I have arthritis, you know, and it�s kind of difficult for me to walk up the stairs,� Gloria Allen, a 79-year-old resident of the General Grant Houses, said. �Some times I don�t even ride the train because I can�t walk up the stairs. Sometimes I take the bus. There are times when I just decide to wait until [the escalators] are running.�

The New York City Transit Authority �put in escalators that are kind of lawsuit-proof,� Joan Levin, a resident of Morningside Gardens since 1957, said. �In other words, they are constructed in a way that the least thing will turn them off so that nobody sues them for getting their foot cut off.�

Stepping on the escalator treads too heavily can cause them to stop, as can sitting on the rubber handrails. If too many people lean to one side, the machine may also stop. Then there�s the allure of pressing the emergency stop button�a temptation that proves too great for some.

Poor lines of communication further complicate the problem. Due to union regulations, station attendants work in their own spheres and often don�t know that the escalators have stopped unless someone notifies them.

In 2004, members of Morningside Gardens Community Relations Committee and General Grant Houses Residents Association circulated a petition expressing dissatisfaction with the 125th street station�s maintenance, obtaining over 1,200 signatures. CB9 has received piles of escalator complaints too: as of January 2005 it had over 200.

�CB9 has been assiduously after the MTA on the stoppages of the escalators and has requested installation of sensors and faster response,� Jordi Reyes-Montblanc, CB9 chair, wrote in an e-mail.

But the problem is not limited to the initial malfunction. Once transit workers are aware of a service failure, either a mechanic must be found or an employee entrusted with an escalator key must restart the escalators. In the meantime, passengers are left to climb a set of stairs that, at its zenith, is about eye-level with the neighborhood�s five-story buildings.

According to NYC Transit spokeswoman Deirdre Parker, this will soon change.

�One of the things we are doing is training our station agents and station supervisors so they can key start our escalators if they stop,� Parker said. �We�ve trained about 1,000 people and we have a class every week.�

CB9 secretary Theodore Kovaleff expressed incredulity that restarting an escalator would require training.

�Running an escalator is not rocket science,� Kovaleff said. �Macy�s does it and it seems to work.�