Getting It Right

The modern escalator was perfected 96 years ago, so when someone is spending $625 million a mile on light rail (which technology is only 80 years old), you’d think they’d at least get the escalators right. Instead, “escalator failures have become a part of the daily routine” at Seattle’s University light-rail station.

If the system were brand new, you might say they were getting the bugs out. If it were old, you might say it was wearing out. Instead, it is not quite a year old, having opened on March 19, 2016. Despite that, they don’t work. To make matters worse, they came with a one-year warranty, which has expired because installation was completed before the station opened for business.
This medicine is not suggested Visit This Link cialis generika 40mg in case if you are searching for the ideal solution to either provide you strength to be recovered from BHP or want to beat the hair damage developed due to the same mechanical malfunction in the body. It also boosts up metabolism, holds back appetite and burns prescription viagra prices fat in place of storing fat in the body. Some of the companies offer a lot of lucrative offers for every purchase of the medication. generic cialis on line Yes! levitra cost of the small pill but which works a lot for a person suffering from erectile dysfunction.
Seattle recently voted to have some of the highest taxes in the nation going for transit. If they aren’t spending an appropriate share of this money on functioning escalators, it makes you wonder where it is going instead.

Tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

8 Responses to Getting It Right

  1. OFP2003 says:

    Fully Warranted while siting idle. This is the construction project manager’s fault. As a professional they should have recognized the importance of the warranty on escalators….. haven’t they ever heard of WMATA? At a minimum they should have planned on purchasing extended warranties for as long as the manufacturer would offer. In FACT the rail project manager should have planned for all escalator maintenance to be performed by the manufacturer via warranties/service plans to reduce the long term pension burden on the agency. Am I nuts??? Please tell me if these basic management ideas are crackpot or not.

  2. LazyReader says:

    Any technology that’s a century old and still manages to find itself functionally relevant in today’s society is worthy of praise………….LIKE THE CAR.

    As technology progressed, we’ve become an “On Demand” society. Everything we typically want or need is on demand, think about it. Wanna soda…50 cents and bam, a can comes out. On demand television (Netflix, Hulu, Xfinity, FIOS), On Demand video (Youtube, Dailymotion), on demand food and groceries (PeaPod), on demand communications (smart phone). So everything in the last couple of years has been for the sake of providing things in an instantaneous fashion for our spoiled butts. Why is transit the only thing that hasn’t gotten on the bandwagon; transit is not on demand, it’s time allotted and place allotted, miss your train, gotta wait for another one, bus stop not in your neighborhood, have to walk 3,4,6,8 Blocks to find one. This is why transit is obsolete, instead of subsisting on our timescales, we must subsist on theirs.

  3. Frank says:

    Yet another reason I’m glad to be out of Seattle.

  4. JOHN1000 says:

    The article explains:

    “Because of a 95-foot depth at UW to boarding platforms, escalators are crucial, since a stair climb would be daunting for most riders. Designers didn’t provide stairs, except an emergency set.”

    After 9/11 and other disasters.,,, they didn’t provide stairs??

  5. Sandy Teal says:

    1. I am no expert, but it always seemed like escalators are very complex machines with a lot of moving and turning parts. And exposing moving parts to rain and dirt and freeze/thaw is always going to cause problems. Yet so many subway escalators don’t even have a roof over them — is that just for aesthetics?

    2. It seems like any deep station needs at least three escalators so that one can go up, one down, and one getting worked on or broken.

    3. Incidents involving elevators and escalators kill about 30 and seriously injure about 17,000 people each year in the United States, according to data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Elevators cause almost 90% of the deaths and 60% of serious injuries. Injuries to people working on or near elevators – including those installing, repairing, and maintaining elevators, and working in or near elevator shafts – account for 14 (almost half) of the annual deaths.

    Half of the deaths of workers working in or near elevator shafts were due to falls into the shaft. Incidents where workers were caught in/between moving parts of elevators and escalators, are in or on elevators or platforms that collapse, or are struck by elevators or counterweights are also numerous.

  6. Not Sure says:

    You can build some sort of facility that can only be accessed by escalators?

Leave a Reply