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ChineseECO1700: Intro to Investing and Metro Elevator Maint.
There’s no better time than now to invest in Metro’s elevator maintenance company! Metro, having an enormous handicap in people moving capabilities must be paying top dollar for the transportation of its riders along the y-axis. If it’s not the escalators, which it by all means is, at least one broken at each station at all times of day, it’s the elevators.
In the last couple weeks elevators at Wilshire/Vermont and Universal City stations have been on lock down. According to announcements, the remedy to the Universal City problem was to take the train to NoHo and then take one of the always dependable, always reliable, always on-time, always faster metro busses back to Universal City. And Wilshire/Vermont’s solution was equally unfortunate, especially when coupled with the terrible scratch of the train speakers and the complete lack of interest/knowledge of the operator. One such operator, though surprisingly clear, was giving the wrong bus directions on how to get back to the Wilshire/Vermont station, confusing the 720 and the 754 rapid lines.
Now I have never ridden the elevators so this has no effect on me outside of pathetic dog entertainment, but I’m sure any disabled people were less than pleased. But lucky for metro, the majority of people that take the elevators are completely able-bodied humans who still see elevators as amusement park rides or are just too lazy to descend/ascend on the electric stairs. Although, as stated before, those are usually out of service as well.
However, what blows me away the most is the time it takes to get them fixed (though it shouldn’t surprise me at all since Metro seems to be in a constant state of disrepair, trains anytime off rush hour running late for such maintenance; a product of cheaping out at the red line’s inception no doubt, another theme of the department). And I don’t want to belittle the elevator/escalator maintenance crew, which because of some weird contract/union clause probably can’t overlap in resources. I just can’t see how 1. The escalators are constantly off line, and 2. Why it takes so long (I believe it took over a week for the scratchy announcements about the Wilshire/Vermont to stop) to fix the elevators? Again, I have no problem with the stairs, all absurd amount of them to actually reach the train platform because they built them beyond the earth’s mantle; I’m just amazed by it.
Which brings me back to my point. Invest in whomever the company/ies is/are that repair metro’s y-axis movers. I’m sure they’re fixed shoddily on purpose so that one repair begets another, like philosophy students becoming philosophy teachers, making the cycle and endless loop. And don’t get me wrong, I’m all for that, economy and jobs and money and all that, what I do is equally prescribed and for the most part unnecessary.
The inspiration for this post is next to me. The elevator at 7th/Metro station has just broken down. I’m sitting on the platform and the train is about to come. I can feel the racing air and seeing the desperate look in the people’s eyes I can tell that the oncoming train is theirs as well. A guy in an orange Metro jacket has arrived and is trying to help, but it seems to be useless. No amount of yelling louder through the dirty glass seems to be helping.
I stand to join the row of people along the platform’s edge as the train rushes by to its stop at the other end of the station. I look over again and recognize one of the girls on the elevator. She had been walking next to me before we separated, she chose the elevator to descend the single floor as I walked down the arduous twenty or so steps. And I felt bad for her, I felt bad for them all for there are few things worst than watching your train disappear into the far tunnel, especially when you know the next one isn’t coming for at least ten more minutes.
The doors open and people hurry to get off as others hurry to get on. I look one more time over to those desperate faces stuck in an elevator used more for bums’ defecation than the movement of the disabled. Then the door sounds and as I board the train, I hear the metro man say, “send the maintenance crew on their way.”
Discussion
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Wow. That’s really disappointing. I’m in a wheelchair and I’m really sad/worried to hear this, because I’ll be moving there soon, in part to get away from Boston’s transit problems.
What I will say is that they definitely designed a better system and do better about it than Boston’s T does. Wilshire/Vermont (the subway near where I stayed in August) at least has the two elevators, which meant despite the fact that one of them was periodically broken, the failsafe of having two elevators *worked*, and in two weeks time I never actually encountered a broken elevator that kept me from using the station; we came close once, an elevator doing a snapping jaws of death routine at Wilshire/Normandie, but at the end of the day everything worked.
I hope they continue with doing the better maintenance… it was obvious that they were having serious problems with the Wilshire/Vermont elevators and I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt that they’ve taken them out of service to fix the problems with them.
Here in Boston it’d be a privilege to get the announcements about what bus routes to take. I’m very glad that I’m not at Wilshire/Vermont right now, but at least it still sounds better than Boston’s situation…
Aaron, they always make announcements when the elevators are broken, but like Tyke said… broken elevators are not uncommon, and damn near a weekly occurance. I do wish they’d do a major upgrade, because it really seems like a huge hassle when those elevators are broken for the people who need them.
Yeah, we’ll see what happens… Boston basically tries to keep busses out of its city center with rare exception, so there’s usually not an alternate option, which is a huge problem of itself.
When an elevator or escalator is broken down, ask Metro or the repair crew what the fix is. Generally, an equipment failure will bring out a crew faster than routine maintenace or rebuilding.
Metro is still putting money into periodic maintenance of the elevators and escalators, but this puts them out of service regularly so that they don’t break down as much. Weird.
My hopes were substantially buoyed by the fact that when I was there (August) they were warning on their LED signs of a 2-wk outage at one of the Hollywood Bl stops (Vine or Highland, I can’t remember which, but I don’t think Western) - and the outage was for DECEMBER! Makes me think that, no matter their faults, they’re at least still on their game. (Even the highest-”quality” subway in the US, DC’s, still has substantial problems with this issue - it’s not a “whose elevators don’t break?” question but a “who manages the problem best?” thing. Boston certainly doesn’t…
It’s sad that I even have to give this much thought to it, but it’s a cost of doing business while disabled. Or more appropriately, a cost of refusing to be beholden to friends/whatever who will drive you places. I enjoy being able to do what I want, when I want, even if no-one else wants to do it at the time.
though as much as the elevators seem to be down, it’s nice to see that they exist at all. not sure what its like in all other major cities, but from time spent in chicago and nyc, they lack them almost entirely.
Chicago, New York, Boston and Philadelphia are among the “legacy” rail systems, and they were built before federal requirements to provide access to disabled riders. The Urban Mass Transit Administration (now Federal Transit Administration) required disabled access as a condition of funding before the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, which was broad in scope.
Modifying these older systems for elevators and wider aisles and platforms is costly, and the agencies were given longer time to convert the stations but were reluctant to because they consider dial-a-ride parallel access. Local citizens and disability-rights groups have taken them to court, and the law requires equal access to the trains themselves.