Rally at High Street Station Tomorrow to Demand Escalator Repair

By on November 17, 2010 8:12 pm in Government, Transportation

State Senator Daniel Squadron, Assemblymember Joan Millman, and Councilmember Steve Levin urge Brooklyn residents to rally at the MTA’s A and C line High Street Station, entrance on Adams Street below Sands Street (near 175 Adams Street) tomorrow (Thursday, November 18) at 4:45 p.m. to demand that the MTA make good on its promise to repair the escalator there.

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  • stair down

    The escalator IS being repaired and, fwiw, an anticipated completion date is posted.

  • Mickey

    I thought High Street Station was on Cadman Plaza West near Cranberry Street. There’s another entrance?

  • nabeguy

    @Mickey, yes, at the other end of the platform. It exits onto Adams Street.

  • ujh

    The problem is not only the escalator that has been shut down for months, but that the second escalator, set to transport subway riders “up” the equivalent of 60 steps from the mezzanine to the entrance, has run only sporadically for weeks. This means that untold numbers of people with bady carriages, luggage and shopping bags have had to carry loads up the steep stairs. Apparently, it is easy to stop an escalator from running, if you know where the lever or button is, but a TA employee must then come to turn it on again. For years, we have been told that young people turn the escalator off as a prank. If it’s that easy to incapacitate the system, the TA is grossly negligent in protecting the public’s safety and security.

  • Lou Sussler

    @Stair Down

    Yes, an anticipated completion date is posted. However, the posters bearing the date have been changed 3 times already pushing the date further into the future.

    In theory, they could never repair the escalator and just keep changing the anticipated completion date in perpetuity.

    Also, as UJH indicated, the MTA has told us that young people turn off the escalator as a prank. While there is an emergency stop button, the green “start” buttons don’t work unless a key is present. At the very least, the MTA could allow passengers to turn the escalator back on.

    The up esclator has been out at least one day a week and frequently two during the evening rush the entire time the other escalator has been under repair. Thats 20 to 45 percent of the time on weekdays.

    Completely unacceptable. I’m going to try to make this rally.

  • AEB

    Am I hallucinating, or more than usually? I know that there are frequent escalator breakdowns, but the problems seem to get fixed with model dispatch.

    I’m in the High Street station at least twice daily and have come to know it like the back of my etc. I even feel some affection for it. Perhaps it’s the deep, deep descent to the platform, like a journey to the center of the earth, or the ascent back to to the world as we know it (or don’t).

    I’m also fond of the little booth at the end of the platform where a police person hangs out from time to time watching station activity on a tiny non-functioning monitor. There’s also the frequent wind-tunnel effect as you descend/ascend the stairs to the street, very beyond-the-blue-horizon.

    All in all, a trip without a suitcase….

  • Andrew Porter

    That station is notorious for being crime ridden, and the trains run far less often than those servicing the Clark Street 2/3 station. I avoid it most of the time. As I’ve posted before, it was originally the link to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and was built to handle far more traffic than it now gets.

    And I’m old enough to remember the wonderful mahogany escalators, which seldom broke down.

  • stair down

    Lou, the rally just seems late in the game. As I understand it, NYCT has acknowledged the complaint about the second escalator and taken action. And the most recent change to the anticipated completion date was to make it a week earlier.