$1 Billion Later, MTA Capital Program To Install More Makeshift Bathrooms Fails To Show Results

So that explains it:

New York City Transit has spent close to $1 billion to install more than 200 new elevators and escalators in the subway system since the early 1990s, and it plans to spend almost that much again for dozens more machines through the end of the next decade. It is an investment of historic dimensions, aimed at better serving millions of riders and opening more of the subway to the disabled.

. . .

The New York Times spent months examining the system, the money spent on it and the oversight by management — conducting dozens of interviews and reviewing thousands of pages of documents. Through an analysis of more than 10 years of records not previously released by the transit agency, reporters were able to track breakdowns, repair calls and maintenance for every escalator and elevator in the system.

What emerged was a portrait of startling shortcomings.

The more than 200 mechanics who maintain and repair the subway’s elevators and escalators receive as little as four weeks of training, a fraction of what they would receive in other transit systems or in private industry. And transit officials concede the system is so inefficient that many elevator and escalator mechanics spend barely half of their shifts actually working on troubled machines.

Managers often rush balky elevators and escalators back into service without identifying the underlying causes of mechanical problems, leading to more breakdowns.

Many problems occur because of basic design flaws or mistakes made during the construction of the machines, when contractors worked with little or no oversight. Those conditions left many of the machines virtually broken from the outset.

“They don’t have enough competent people with the proper training,” said Michele O’Toole, the president of J. Martin Associates, which the transit agency hired in 2006 to evaluate its elevator operations. “It all reflects back to qualifications, training, capabilities.”

Transit officials say the subway presents unique challenges.

Elevators and escalators are spread out over a far-flung system, requiring more mechanics and slowing responses to breakdowns. There has been little standardization of parts, so mechanics must cope with a bewildering hodgepodge of machinery. And the machines, which operate 24 hours a day, are subject to all sorts of abuse: Elevators become makeshift bathrooms, and escalator steps are pounded by heavily loaded hand trucks.