Friday, October 5, 2007

Roosevelt Island Straphangar Details Being Stuck in Station Elevator

Apparently one of the two elevators on Roosevelt Island got stuck yesterday requiring the police to assist allowing the occupants of the cabin to exit.

According to “
This Jeof”:

Like the elevators in my home subway station on Roosevelt Island occasionally do. The platform on RI is 150 feet deep - one of the deepest in the city - and as such long escalators and elevators are required lest old women die of heart attacks. I happened to get in the elevator yesterday because that's where I was on the platform. Up, up, up we go until ... we don't. The thing stopped moving. The air got stuffy. The doors did not open and the buttons did not respond. The one place I did not want to be in that moment was trapped in a small metal box hanging precariously in a 150 foot shaft. Moreover, the station agent on the emergency intercom was completely useless (and was possibly drunk) . Opening the door revealed we were three feet above some hidden floor of the station but we were not to leave the metal box hanging precariously in a 150 foot shaft until the police came to guide us out.

Eventually we got out okay and were actually pretty close to the surface. And it was kind of cool to see the secret floors of a subway station though I didn't really have time to look around. This morning the elevator was out of order. No word as to what went wrong or what the station agent was drinking.”

On a day they are discussing taking the Tram off line we hear of something like this. As one of the Tram operators mentioned to me today. All they need is a few days of disrupted subway service with no operational tram and the residents of this island will be in a terrible mood. Angry mobs we don’t need. Safe and working elevators and escalators we do need.

No comments:

Post a Comment