Then I saw he had someone with him...a photographer? Is this something for a student film?
By the way, I noticed they still have never rented out the shop space they built in one corner of the Union Square subway station over twenty years ago..
I believe the MTA has taken over this intended store space for their own reasons...there are problems having stores down in the subway in certain locations.
By the way, the Union Square station has one of the newest and nicest escalators up to the street...when it's working
I wonder if there is any general information on the escalators ( and elevators) in the NYC subway system...let me see...
Well, this from Yahoo Finance (based on a press release from the MTA! So who knows how believeable this is...
NYC subway elevator, escalator reliability rising
On the rise: Reliability is up for NYC subway system's elevators and escalators, MTA says
– Mon, May 21, 2012 1:15 PM EDTNEW YORK (AP) -- Things are looking up for those who use elevators and escalators to get down to New York City's subways.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said Monday that elevator and escalator reliability is on the rise.
Subway escalators were up and running more than 96 percent of the time during the first quarter of this year, compared to less than 92 percent of the time in 2010.
Meanwhile, elevators were working more than 98 percent of the time in the first three months of 2012, up about one percentage point from 2010.
The city's subway system has 235 elevators, 178 escalators and two power walks. An electronic monitoring system alerts the MTA when an elevator or escalator stops working.
More than 5 million people ride the subways on an average weekday.
However, this is what the MTA says...just two years ago the situation was not so good as reported in this New York Times article
Common Sight for Some Subway Riders: Broken Elevators and Escalators
By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY
Published: October 13, 2011
At the Delancey Street subway station in Manhattan, the escalator works
so infrequently that Karen Lee Benson tries to avoid using that stop
unless her husband is with her. Consider the alternative: a 60-stair
hike to the street with her two sons under 3 and their strollers.
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Karen Lee Benson with her sons, Alistaire, left, and
Julius Pillai-Benson, at the Delancey Street subway station in
Manhattan.
At the subway station at Lexington Avenue and 63rd Street, John Davidson Miller knows that there is only a 50-50 chance of the elevator working. So Mr. Miller, 84, a retired United Nations employee, has been trying to avoid the train when making his way to his appointments with nearby doctors a few times a week.
These are snapshots from what the latest data provided by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority show are some of the worst performing elevators and escalators in the New York City subway system.
In large measure, the system’s 194 elevators in 73 stations, and its 178 escalators in 52 stations, work far more often than not. Elevator availability was measured at 95.3 percent in the second quarter of this year, compared with 96.8 percent in the same period last year; escalators held steady at 92.8 percent.
Still, some troubling issues remained; in those three months, there were 73 instances when riders got stuck in elevators. And escalators and elevators in disrepair tended to stay that way.
“The public perception is in a totally different place because if you come upon an escalator and it’s out of service, your perception is that it’s never in service,” Thomas F. Prendergast, president of New York City Transit, said.
The authority knows that this has long been a problem and is doing its best to fix it, Mr. Prendergast said. In July, the authority restructured elevator and escalator operations by creating a dedicated 299-person group, naming Tony Suarez as its leader, and having him present quarterly reports directly to the authority board.
Since then, the authority has tried to give riders better updates about out-of-service elevators and escalators by sending text messages, posting information on its Web site and adding more signs in stations. Most of all, Mr. Prendergast said, he is trying to change the mind-set of transit workers who dismiss broken elevators as an inevitable part of urban transportation.
“Part of it’s denial and part of it’s blaming others,” Mr. Prendergast said of some transit workers’ view of elevator and escalator problems. “But we have to rise to another place.”
Visits to some of these stations showed that the authority has plenty of work ahead. At the Pelham Bay Park station in the Bronx, one of the two elevators was out of service 72 percent of the time in the second quarter of this year, and the lone escalator worked one-third of the time. So it was not surprising to see an out-of-order sign hung near an elevator at the mezzanine level.
What was surprising was to see the elevator doors open and passengers disembark.
A mechanic nearby said he had just fixed the elevator, but cautioned that it was subject to breakdowns because it was occasionally exposed to the elements, and “rain and metal don’t mix.”
It is even difficult for the most politically connected to get station elevators fixed promptly. Councilman James Vacca, a Bronx Democrat who is the chairman of the City Council’s Transportation Committee, said he had recently called the authority from the Pelham Bay Park station to report the elevator was broken.
“The M.T.A. said to me: ‘No, Mr. Vacca. It was fixed.’ I said, ‘No, I am here,’ ” Mr. Vacca said. “Three days later, that was fixed.”
Some of the city’s deepest stations, where riders are most dependent on elevators and escalators, also have the worst performance records, like the Lexington Avenue-63rd Street station. Mr. Miller, the retiree, said that to get home to Roosevelt Island after his regular medical appointments, if the elevator was not working, he had to take three escalators down to the platform for the Queens-bound F train — or else walk to Second Avenue and 60th Street for the tram.
At the Flushing Avenue stop in Brooklyn, the elevator to street level on a recent afternoon filled steadily with patients heading to Woodhull Medical Center. Older riders leaned on canes and walkers, while younger mothers squeezed strollers onto the elevator, which has the worst performance record in Brooklyn.
Ms. Duncan, who leaned on her walker, shared tales of when that elevator had trapped passengers or had been out of service for weeks.
“Most of the time, they have the sign, ‘It’s not working,’ ” Ms. Duncan said. “I am surprised it’s on now.”
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