As Nathalie mentioned last week, the escalators at the UW light station break down… a LOT. If you’re into sweating hard, breathing heavy, and risking arrest, it might not be such a big deal for you to climb up the side of the building or whatever, but just plain taking the stairs isn’t even an option at the UW station. Why? Aside from the emergency-only stairs that aren’t open to the public, there literally aren’t any. This has lead to crazy delays for the elevators, including a 45-minute wait just to get out of the station in March of this year. Neglecting to put in stairs seems like a slight design flaw—although, truth be told, not having the option to walk is mighty convenient for people like me and Donald Trump, who know the truth about exercise.
Anyway! Nathalie wrote to the good people at Sound Transit to find out just WTF is up with the broke-ass elevators and nonexistent stairs and they sent her back a PowerPoint explaining just how badly they fucked up. In short, they put the wrong escalators in the UW station in an attempt to save some dollars. What they didn’t mention, however, was that the cost to fix this fuck up is predicted to be at least $20 million, including replacing the shitty escalators and putting in public stairs.
And that’s just the beginning of Sound Transit’s escalator woes. They also need to add stairs in the Capitol Hill station and deal with escalator and elevator issues at the Westlake, University Street, Pioneer, and Chinatown International District stations as well. As for why these things keep breaking down, part of it is wear and tear, but, as Mike Lindblom pointed out in the Seattle Times, escalators are frequently damaged by “biowastes when people relieve themselves on conveyances.” Maybe after they fix the escalators, Sound Transit can put in a few toilets. They might even save a few bucks.
