Times Herald Record
New York - The way some commuters see it, the out-of-service escalators are the last straw.
By the time they reach the bank of escalators in PATH's World Trade Center station, they have already endured a long train ride from Orange County to Hoboken Terminal and perhaps missed their connecting PATH train.
So when they finally get to the other side of the river, they aren't happy about waiting in line to get on an escalator to take them up and out of the station.
Commuters say some of the eight escalators are out of service almost every day and, on occasion, have been out of service for weeks and months at a time. Some mornings, only two are working up; on others, none works in one direction or the other. Some evenings, the situation is better; others, it's worse.
As William Cano of Washingtonville put it, in boldface, in an e-mail, "If they're broken, for God's sake, fix them!"
Tom Michaels of Blooming Grove conceded the lines do move, and Marty Rabinowitz of Monroe takes the position that "waiting five minutes to get on an escalator is better than walking up all of those stairs!"
So what is going on here?
The Port Authority, which operates PATH, claims it tries not to have more than one escalator in either direction out of service at any given time.
The problem, according to Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the agency, is that the operating mechanisms in escalators are extremely sensitive today and can be fouled readily with small pieces of debris - the odd speck of gravel falling off a shoe, for example.
"We think the open-air nature of the temporary station probably contributes to this situation, and we're hoping the problem will be lessened somewhat when we have the permanent station in place," he said.
In the interim, PATH has adjusted the schedules of some maintenance personnel to keep a closer eye on the escalators, particularly before the morning and evening rush hours and occasionally during them.
Coleman said sometimes the stalled escalator can be reset and brought back up into service quickly. And sometimes not.
