same situation at University St.

@1: really? NEVER? metro cannot fix an escalator? they keep a 3-county system of trains and buses moving every day, but only the private sector can get anything done?

I predict this thread will get over 60 comments.

The escalator situation in the tunnel is ridiculous. Every other day it seems at least one escalator at every tunnel station is out of commission. Sometimes they're closed for a day, sometimes weeks. Sometimes they're closed for awhile and get all new parts, re-open for a few days, and then get closed for another week. Sometimes they're closed and it appears that no one is every going to work on them. Earlier this year one was closed and a sign was posted along the lines of "Hey, we're accepting bids to get this fixed so we don't know exactly when it will be fixed!" It's like musical chairs but with elevator closure signs. When I get off the bus I have no idea what will work and what won't. Sometimes the workers have the steps removed and one can peer deep down into the hidden machinery. Sometimes they are simply forgotten broken elevators, silently begging for attention.

Ugh, that's the problem with socialists. If you want the escalator to be fixed, do it yourself instead of waiting for someone else to!

Long lead times on parts? There are only so many escalator manufacturers.

Let's just hope it's not the same as the San Francisco escalators: http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2012/07/26/E…

@ 2 I am a democrat and believe in the good of government but there are areas where the private sector could do better, and this is one of them. .

Use stairs ya lazy bastards!

@8: Yes, I often take the stairs. But the escalators aren't just for lazy people, they handle extra capacity. Watch a group of people who normally take the escalator be forced to use the stairs while at the same time a group is trying to come down the stairs. Not fun.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but escalators are typically furnished and installed by the same company, right? So if Metro is using Kone escalators, then Kone is going to do the install as well, which means that this work is getting subcontracted out to the private sector no matter what, and @1/7 are just making a straw man argument.

@1, Of course they subcontract out escalator repair. Do you really think Metro or the county has their own crews to maintain elevators and escalators or do think they might have a service contract in place?

Well, taking transit is about sacrificing comfort to lower one's carbon footprint, right? And a shut-down escalator isn't using electricity, therefore it makes the carbon footprint even smaller.

If you're gonna decide to wear the hair shirt, don't complain that it itches.

This seems to be the norm for escalators. Perhaps it is a failed technology? I'm questioning the usefulness of these devices.

You know something that works really well? YOUR LEGS! Try using them the next time you're descending/ascending. Elevators seem to work much better for those that need it anyway.

I used to take Sounder in to the ID station, and then get on LINK to University Station.

There were not torrents of people getting off at University station, but there were at the International District. Now add in baseball, football, soccer crowds.

Yet the ID escalators are hardly ever in a repair state.

@13: Many people use their legs while on the escalators. At least during commuting hours in the tunnel. I realize at places like Target people stupidly just stand on them like zombies though.

I agree that the bus tunnel escalators don't seem to get adequate service to keep them in reliable operation, but fail to see what neglected public infrastructure has to do with Harvard Market. That is a complete non-sequiter.

I guess you could point out that escalators, whether public or private, require a budget that supports ongoing maintenance. Interesting too perhaps is that "private enterprise" doesn't seem to be able to deal with this need any better than a public agency.

Here's a posting from 9/2/2011 entitled "An Update on Escalator and Elevator Outages":

http://seattletransitblog.com/2011/09/02…

Ah, found the image I took back in June of one of the escalator outage signs. Damn vandals!

http://i.imgur.com/UWJTy.jpg

Let's see. The Stranger is a newspaper. Charles is a reporter. Hey, here's an idea. Make a fucking phone call and do some reporting!

@ 3, why? Slow day on Slog? That's my theory as to why it's gotten more than three.

@12: Lowering your carbon footprint is ONE reason that people use transit, but it's far from the only one. For instance, I use public transportation but carbon emissions are not a factor in that decision. It's merely a pleasant side effect. I ride the bus to work for a number of other reasons: my wife and I have chosen not to purchase a second car for financial reasons; parking in town is a bitch; I don't enjoy driving and time riding the bus can be spent sleeping, reading, or playing games while time driving a car can only be spent driving a car. For me, taking the bus is a convenience, not an inconvenience I accept for ethical reasons.

Also, I care much less about the perpetually broken escalators now that my route has been relegated to surface streets instead of the tunnel. That extra 10+ minutes makes the escalator sitch seem like the least of Metro's incompetencies.

Escalators, for the most part, are 100% hand-built custom manufactured products ... designed and constructed to fit the application where they are needed. When things do go wrong ... if the problem isn't one of the standard components (like the wheels, gears, motors, etc ... then it takes time to get the replacement parts built.

Compounding the issue is when you have escalators that are exposed to the elements ... all manner of gunk gets caught up in the mechanism which can break them or cause them to shutdown to prevent breakage.

Also ... the Summit Ave escalators between Madison and Marion are often down as well ... the up escalator isn't working today.

The real issue is whether they keep hiring the same companies to re-fix problems that they didn't really fix the last time they were on scene

“An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You would never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.”
--Mitch Hedberg

@23: That is true if there is zero intention of repairing it (i.e. removing the steps and getting underneath it).

#5 is correct. When I worked at Borders just over a decade ago, the escalator would be down a long time due to specific parts coming in from some other place like Canada. I went back years later and noticed they got rid of the escalator. Now Borders is gone and so no one can say a damn thing about the escalators not working.

@22 -- Government escalators provided by my favorite contractor: "The Lowest Bidder"

@19 -- Mudede hasn't been a reporter in some time. If he had, he'd know the Harvard Market elevator really isn't out of order often. It does remarkably well for an machine housed outdoors with complicated moving parts.

@26 Who the hell are they supposed to choose? Of course they're going to choose the lowest bid. People would throw a fucking fit if they didn't.

If the government stopped awarding work to the lowest bidder, people all across the country would complain about how much of a waste of taxpayer money it is that the gov't is hiring more expensive contractors than they absolutely have to.

@27 -- The system works best when contracts are awarded to the biggest campaign donors or the department head's brother-in-law.

At least then no one would expect the elevator works.

(or we could award contracts to the companies for efficiency / effectiveness instead of installation costs.)

@27,

How about the lowest bid from a company that doesn't have a track record of incompetence?

Here's a contract. Not quite sure if it covers everything you wish to happen, but there's some contact info in there.

@32: When budgets get cut, the first thing that happens is maintenance gets deferred.

@27 It's actually written into the Federal code that government agencies must, eith a few very limited exceptions, accept tje lowest bid. So it's not that they want to, they have to.

@29 (and others) the crappy bidders wquite regularly go out of business. But new ones come right along in their place.

@34 -- So the system is perfect? I believe the City of Seattle has ways around the lowest bid when it really wants something to work.

Those guys in the Facilities Department sure seem to spend a lot of money on stuff that doesn't work well, don't they?

(I know Metro is a county program)

Escalators are terribly unreliable. In places where they want to ensure an escalator will always be in service they put in three so they can do scheduled maintenance rather than handling breakdowns.

@35 I never said it was perfect. I deal with the fallout from low-bid construction all the time.

It is a large and crude hammer designed to pound the market down to appease free-market-is-wonderful types. Occasionally it works correctly and the public gets an outstanding product at a competitive price. More often the hidden costs of fixing the low bidder's crappy and hurried slipshod work negate any imagined savings.

My agency maintains a blacklist of contractors but it doesn't work. The bad apples go out of business and the people that worked there go on to work for other contractors. Our blacklist is always out of date.

This escalator work at Pioneer Station is part of a major refurbishing project Metro has underway. The tunnel escalators have reached the end of their expected 20-year life so we are refurbishing 39 escalators throughout the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel. The project began in Oct. of 2011 and is now about 50% complete. The project is on schedule and we expect to have work wrapped up by mid-2013.

The shot above shows two escalators side-by-side at Pioneer Station. Work on the first unit began July 16 and was completed on Sept 6 --within our anticipated eight-week schedule. When that unit was returned to service, work began on the second escalator. That unit should be done within a couple weeks.

The project is being funded by a $5.9 million federal grant with about $300,000 in matching funds from Metro.

Rochelle Ogershok
King County Department of Transportation/Metro

This escalator work at Pioneer Station is part of a major refurbishing project Metro has underway. The tunnel escalators have reached the end of their expected 20-year life so we are refurbishing 39 escalators throughout the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel. The project began in Oct. of 2011 and is now about 50% complete. The project is on schedule and we expect to have work wrapped up by mid-2013.

The shot above shows two escalators side-by-side at Pioneer Station. Work on the first unit began July 16 and was completed on Sept 6 --within our anticipated eight-week schedule. When that unit was returned to service, work began on the second escalator. That unit should be done within a couple weeks.

The project is being funded by a $5.9 million federal grant with about $300,000 in matching funds from Metro.

-Rochelle Ogershok
King County Department of Transportation

Thanks for the update, Rochelle.