Maintenance Lapses Led To Midtown Subway Escalator Wreck: Study

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — Maintenance inspections on a Midtown Manhattan subway escalator that shredded apart while carrying passengers went incomplete or were canceled in the six months prior to the February 2019 wreck, according to an MTA Inspector General investigation released Tuesday.

The upper landing of an escalator at the Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street station "accordioned" on the morning of Feb. 25, causing severe damage to the equipment, according to the MTA report. Nobody was injured, but "the potential for serious injury seems clear," MTA Inspector General Carolyn Pokorny wrote in her report.

An investigation of the wreck revealed that the escalator was running with significant wear and tear on parts that should have been identified during a preventative maintenance inspections. The last completed inspection before the wreck was completed on August 9, 2018. Inspections for August 31 and Jan. 26, 2019 were "incomplete" and two inspections between those dates were canceled, according to the inspector general's investigation. The report blamed the lack of a completed inspection on "significant management lapses."

"You cannot have escalators wrecking with people on them — especially at rush hour in Midtown Manhattan," Pokorny said in a statement. "While it is fortunate that no one was seriously injured, even during an era of resource constraints, New York City Transit must ensure that our stations’ key access points remain safe and operational."

NYC Transit updated its escalator maintenance program in mid-2019 following the wreck to ensure for more frequent inspections, but problems that led to the Febuary 2019 wreck persist, according to the inspector general report. To this day, New York City Transit does not create management reports that contain information on the history of canceled, delayed or incomplete maintenance visits per escalator.

Pokorny recommended that NYC Transit train management staff to run real-time reports on escalator maintenance history, develop a report that will keep all past maintenance information in one place and create clear guidelines to determine when escalator maintenance can or cannot be canceled or delayed.

NYC Transit agreed to the recommendations made in the inspector general's report, according to Pokorny.