A staff response to the Commission’s queries about escalator reliability appears as item 35b in the agenda for the July 19th meeting. You can read the report here.
The report proposes a system that will alert Collectors and the central escalator maintenance office at Ossington Station when a problem occurs. The basic problem is that most units are not wired back to the Collector’s booth and the way station staff find out about stoppages is that someone complains.
I might be understanding about this situation at, say, King Station where the Melinda escalator, often stopped, is old and miles from the booth. However, the guinea-pig station for this project is Bayview on the Sheppard line. It’s so nice to learn that our $1-billion bought us some tolerably interesting architecture, but no system to alert staff when an escalator is stopped.
Assuming the trial at Bayview is successful, all escalators and elevators on the Sheppard line will be hooked up by the end of 2010, and the rest of the network will follow by 2012. Then, finally, mechanics can be dispatched to the scene.
Maybe while they’re putting in all of the new communications gear for this project and station security upgrades, they can snap a photo of all those teenagers who are alleged to be stopping the escalators. Run mug shots on the platform video screens. Catch those villains!
Meanwhile, the report is silent on the simple question of why route supervisors at major stations like Kennedy or Finch don’t report escalator problems and, where possible, deal with them as a basic part of their job.
My original post on this subject follows below.
Back in March, I reviewed the situation with stopped escalators. Over the winter, this had been particularly annoying because of the frequency and because in my personal travel, some of the “bad actors” are very long.
This issue came up at the TTC meeting in April, and a report was promised for May. May came and went, as did June, and we are still waiting.
One major problem appears to be the assignment of responsibility for monitoring and restarting escalators. Most Collectors’ booths have indicators showing that an escalator is stopped, but in many cases the staff are in no position to go and restart it. The worst example of this in my regular travels is Kennedy Station where a Collector would have to leave the booth for at least ten minutes just to get to some escalators, wait for pedestrians to clear off, restart the machinery, watch for a brief time to see that it didn’t stop again immediately, and finally return to the booth. This is not practical.
One wonders why the many route supervisors and security personnel lounging about the station don’t take on this duty as a matter of course. Ideally, escalators would have standard keys and staff could carry one rather than having to retrieve it from the booth.
From a statistical point of view, things improved in late March. I can’t put this down to the weather because by then the worst of winter was long gone. Maybe there was a change in personnel assigned to the station and someone with better public spirit was minding the store. Intriguingly, when there are problems, they seem to come in clusters. Was the guardian angel of escalators on vacation?
The TTC operates the largest fleet of escalators in Ontario and keeping them all running is a major part of station maintenance. But it needs to be done. Part of this is the routine work we all see from time to time as escalators are serviced. My stoppage stats do not include these.
If vehicles broke down and were abandoned on the street as often as escalators are stopped, proportionately speaking, it would be an outrage. Escalators are an important part of the system — they are part of what makes stations accessible and allows many riders to use the conventional system. Even for people like me who only suffer from occasional sore knees, they are welcome.
Many people have asked me why escalators in shopping malls always work. Two reasons: one is that the period when the mall is closed is longer and maintenance is done at night; another is that mall escalators are less exposed to tracked in dirt, snow and salt than in the subway. But the big one is that malls know people will not be able to move around easily without the escalators — stairways in malls are well hidden — and they are an essential part of making their buildings attractive. The TTC’s attitude seems to be that there is always a stairway. It’s true, but that doesn’t change the fact that people depend on escalators for a comfortable part of their journey.
The July TTC meeting agenda will be out by Friday, and we will see whether this issue has finally risen to the surface.
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July 11, 2006: Well, it had to happen someday. I was in the mall at Scarborough Town Centre, and found a stopped escalator. It was working when I came in, and it was stopped 10 minutes later when I was leaving and wanted to use it.
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The following comment from Harold McMann was posted in the wrong thread, and I have moved it here.
To be a bit fair about the escalator outages, it is not always because of a mechanical fault, maintenance problems or schedled shutdowns. Inconsiderate, self-centered people are the cause of many of the “stopped” escalators.
When schools are operating, it can be like clockwork at many stations when the escalators seem to stop, around the time of school getting out.
An escalator has a great number of safety micro switches located throughout its structure, to trip the operation, should a hand, foot or other body part or item get caught in the many moving parts that are visible to the public. Some of the useless, too much time on their hands, individuals know how to trip these safety switches, causing the escalator to stop, then the fault shows as a mechanical problem and must be checked by the escalator repair people, prior to attempted start-up.
This all takes time, and the collector is not always able to leave their booth for restart. As for comparing escalators with the TTC and a department store or mall escalators — usually at a mall or department store has employees working within sight of the escalators and can see what is going on and be seen by those twits that got nothing better to do than push the stop buttons. TTC’s escalators, unfortunately for the most part, can be out of sight and prime targets for those individuals that seem to enjoy watching an escalator stop running.
Steve: If it’s only a question of some twit pushing a stop button, that should not require a callout of an escalator mechanic to do a full check before restarting. The real question is: what proportion of escalator stoppages are caused by a tripped “safety” switch, and how many from other causes? What surprises me is that TTC management can take so long to come back with a reasonable explanation of a problem that was raised three months ago.
Steve Munro 
During the CBC lockout last year there was an interesting BBC series on TV called “Tube”. It was about the London Underground and one thing struck me: each Tube station in London has a Manager who has the authority and responsibility to make sure it runs properly. From the programmes — and observation — this seems to work quite well.
I was thus quite surprised to learn that the TTC does not have anyone who has OVERALL authority of a station. If they did I am sure that the annoyingly malfunctioning escalators would be restarted or repaired more quickly, broken doors would be fixed faster, signage might even be improved and outdated signage such as the signs at the College subway station platforms saying “Toronto Maple Leafs” might be removed — the team moved from Maple Leaf Gardens MANY years ago!
A station is more than the sum of its parts and by having one person responsible for tying all the activities/functions (ticket booths, cleaning, subway platforms, bus and steeetcar platforms, repairs etc.) together would surely help to create a much more unified service.
Steve: I agree totally. One of my own bugbears is the number of notices that are weeks, if not months, out of date still gracing walls all over the system. Another is the number of handwritten signs for things that deserve permanent signage. The image this gives is of a system that doesn’t care how it looks, no, that has forgotten that having a look ever meant anything at all.
Probably twenty years ago, I saw a wonderful, simple idea in Boston — temporary notices in stations had a “remove after” date on them. This made it immensely simple for any staff to determine when the sign should come down. No confusion, but no half torn, graffiti laden old notices either. I suggested this to the TTC, but like so many good simple easy to do ideas, it was ignored.
Now at Broadview Station we have a lovely new board containing a map of the station that shows where all of the buses and streetcars stop. Of course, you can see that just by walking out onto the platform. What we don’t have on the same board is timetables. They are posted on the other side of the station and they might even be current.
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The problems we seem to be having with elevators and escalators made me wonder if we could design a subway station without moving parts: i.e. a fully accessible subway station where the passengers walk between the exits and the platforms using only wheelchair accessible ramps.
Could this be done?
Realizing that we’d need, at maximum, 5% grades in order for this situation to work, I figure this would amount to a lot of walking, but there are some stations where this is tantalizingly possible. Consider Rosedale, where the exits are all on the north end of the station. Two wheelchair accessible ramps could run down the sides of the stations, putting passengers out around the middle or near the south end of the platform. For anybody getting off the train at the south end of the platform, there’d be no additional inconvenience.
But try doing this to Dundas or Queen stations, and the situation becomes impossible.
Steve: Don’t make this suggestion too loudly. The design and construction work would keep the TTC’s engineers in small change for decades! It would rival the fire safety program as a long running, huge ticket project.
A five percent grade is something of a challenge. This is almost as steep as the Bathurst Street hill (6%), and only slightly steeper than the hill on the subway north of Summerhill (4%). A typical subway station is at least two stories underground, probably 30 feet down to the platform at a minimum. At a 5% grade, you would need a 600-foot long ramp to get to the surface, and you would no doubt encounter all sorts of intriguing plumbing on the way. Skateboarders would love you!
One possibility might be vertical shafts with hot air balloons, but that would only work at Davisville where a plentiful and constant supply is available. Senior Management might stage a wildcat strike if forced to work nights to keep this system operational, although we might work out some sort of reservoir system.
Of course, we can avoid the entire problem by putting the station at grade level in the first place and running LRT. Or shouldn’t I have mentioned this?
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It would be intriguing to get some detailed evidence about this problem.
I wouldn’t be surprised that at any given time during TTC operation, there is at least one broken escalator somewhere on the system.
The ones I used to frequent (Finch & York Mills) seemed especially cantankerous.
Steve: I am sure that there are many more that are regularly out of service. The criterion for inclusion in my survey was that the escalator had to be one I was actually trying to use. I see far more than these that are stopped in my travels, but they don’t count toward the total. This is a serious and pervasive problem.
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When the Bloor-Danforth line opened in 1966, the number one complaint was not enough escalators, and in those early days, they all worked!
I remember reading a news article in the Star about how an elderly woman had a heart attack and died while climbing the steps at one of the automatic entrances during the first week — I think it was Lansdowne/Emerson. That’s why the BD extensions to Islington and Warden had more escalators, but still not enough.
Nowadays with them not working so often, it’s even worse. If you look at the TTC’s track record on this topic (closing the Spadina moving walkways and the Keele Speedramp), they just don’t seem to care. More people need to speak up and complain.
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Steve wrote, “One wonders why the many route supervisors and security personnel lounging about the station don’t take on this duty as a matter of course.”
Basically, it is because it is not in their job descriptions. While there may be the occasional instance of this meaning someone asserting this to justify their own laziness, more often in a unionized environment, it materializes in someone having an issue with someone else doing a task that is not in their job description but someone else’s.
Even in that situation, it seems to be pretty rare for the complaint to come from the person who has it in their own job description, but from some busy-body with nothing better to do than to make sure everyone is following the collective agreement.
Steve: There’s only one teensy-weensy problem with your rant: the route supervisors are non-union staff as are, I believe, the security personnel. You don’t have to have a union card to have an “it’s not my job” attitude.
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The subway janitors are mobile enough that they ought to be given escalator keys and tasked with restarting stopped escalators. Why isn’t this posibility being examined? It wouldn’t cost the TTC anything, and all it would take is a PA call to the janitor to notify them of the stopped escalator.
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The escalator on the westbound platform at Greenwood station is down more then half the time. If escaltors are down because of mechanical issues, the TTC should hire more staff to solve the problem, or even consider to build new escaltors with special features to prevent dirt, salt, water and other elements to mess the escaltor up.
Of course there are also some kids who think stopping an escalator gives them crediblity among their peers. The situation got so far out of control at Warden station, TTC police has to come to Warden just to make sure these kids don’t mess with the escalators. The issue is not just a ticket collector spending 10 minutes to fix something. It’s complicated in a way with bigshots not wanting to spend money to fix it with ease.
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Escalator up time is hard to quantify if there is nothing to compare to. If the escalator works where you need to travel, it is 100% reliable. If the same escalator does not work for you, it is 0% reliable. Everything man made will have down time, the question becomes what is an acceptable range.
Let’s start with a brief comparison. A Bell land line typically has a up time rate of 99.99% of the time. This means in a year, there should be 52.56 minutes of down time in one year. A slight reduction in reliablilty to 95% like a cable TV network means down time is increased to 18 days and 6 hours every year.
These numbers are for networks based on non moving parts. Escalators with moving parts will be a lot less reliable. It would be interesting to see what kind of up time numbers the TTC can achieve with its escalators. If more money is invested in technology like redundant motors and stronger chains, up time should definietely be higher.
Personally, I question the design of TTC subway stations. Why do we have deep stations like Don Mills in the middle of suburbia? Escalators become a must. The three flights of stairs at Kennedy Station to the RT is another example. Why can’t stations be more like Bathurst or Main St? They are not that difficult to walk up by stairs.
Steve, why do you think the TTC likes to repair escalators and tunnels during 9 to 5 hours? The whole point of the subway/metro running 20 hours a day is to allow repairs during the off times. It is not too smart to repair things when commuters are using it.
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As Steve said, “There’s only one teensy-weensy problem with your rant: the route supervisors are non-union staff as are, I believe, the security personnel. You don’t have to have a union card to have an “it’s not my job” attitude.”
True, but a union environment makes this attitude more prevalent for both the union employees AND the non-union employees.
As my original comment says, “While there may be the occasional instance of this meaning someone asserting this to justify their own laziness, more often in a unionized environment, it materializes in someone having an issue with someone else doing a task that is not in their job description but someone else’s.”
The non-union route supervisors as well as the security personnel know all too well the repercussions of stepping on the scope of someone else’s job description. As I said before, it is not always the person who has it in their job description that has the problem, but often a third party that has nothing better to do than to make sure everyone else is not doing something that is in someone else’s job description.
(If you have the time, get a copy of the movie “Carry On At Your Convenience” to see a humourous look at job description and collective agreements gone wild).
Steve: This is addressed to readers in general, not just to the writer above. We need to stop trying to blame the problems of the universe on unions and start looking at the culture of large organizations. The TTC is an incredibly hidebound animal where 40 years ago, in the middle of the “swinging 60s”, a culture descended from the military still prevailed. A few people who thought they knew what they were doing commanded, and many obeyed. This works as long as people feel it’s for a good cause, but the culture of management as fair-haired guru of the 80s, followed by the funding and service cutbacks of the 90s, combined to demoralize staff at all levels, union or not.
Once an organization loses a sense of purpose and direction, it’s a short step to everyone putting in their time. We have a Commission who on one hand want to bend over backward to accommodate every conceivable problem a rider may have, expects staff to use their discretion in enforcing fare policy, and yet also kvetches when the staff try to uphold that very policy. If someone is told to use their discretion, and is kicked in the teeth for choosing wrongly, they won’t do it again and moreover won’t care to step outside of their box.
“It’s not my job” is a cultural problem of organizations, not of unions. If we blame it on the unions, this is no different than TTC management who notoriously blame everything that happens on something other themselves. But you’ve all heard that speech before here, and I will stop now.
The nub of my argument is that we need to attack the cultural problem of the organization. Slagging the unions simply for their existence diverts attention from fundamental questions of coherent management and political oversight.
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First off, I dont really see this as a “huge” issue. For work I enter at Christie Station and exit at King at night, or vice-versa when heading home in the morning. Many times at King I’ll find the escalator stopped (at night), but I can only recall one occasion of seeing it stopped at Christie (in the morning).
When I find one, I walk, or I take the stairs. Usually I’ll walk up the escalator since I’m already there. If it really is a situation of “it’s his duty not mine” then that’s a problem that’s easy to fix. If it’s a problem of teenagers pressing the button (my suspect) then why not have people ready at the places it happens often to confiscate their metropasses (or at least threathen to to scare them a bit).
Frankly, there are many bigger fish to fry on the TTC – IMO.
Steve: One big issue here is accessibility of the system. We are spending a fortune to retrofit elevators, and the Wheel Trans operation is starved for operating funds. If would-be riders are blocked from using the system by unreliability of escalators, then they are forced onto private transit, or to Wheel Trans (complaining that escalators don’t work isn’t a valid reason) or prevented from travelling.
As for the teenagers pushing the button, your observation that the problem is much more often seen at King than at Christie tells me that it’s not teenagers, but unreliability of equipment and a lack of attention to keeping it in operation.
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I see that the TTC staff Report on escalators is out — July 19th. meeting Reports. It is perhaps instructive to see this agenda item started with a request from the Commissioners in November 2003 so even reporting on escalators seems to take a while!
As one might expect, the staff report proposes (or describes) an ENGINEERING solution. Their idea of real-time reporting by fibre optics is perhaps a good idea but they do not seem to consider that, as has been noted here, the problem is often not a breakdown requiring a mechanic but simply an escalator needing to be reset. I continue to think that if each station had ONE PERSON in overall control (as seems to be the case in London) it might be possible to get things like escalators restarted promptly, out-of-date notices removed and signage improved. (It would also, one presumes, be useful in an emergency.)
Steve: The idea of setting up a central reporting system to monitor escalators has been around for years, but nothing ever happened. As you point out, this only addresses one part of the problem — knowing whether the escalator is running or which way it may have failed — not the general issue of having someone responsible for a station overall. Given the amount of work involved, I’m not sure that we need one per station, but we certainly could do with a roving station manager who was responsible for a group of stations.
The report makes no attempt to explain why it takes MONTHS (or years!) to repair escalators and why they often sit disassembled and with nothing happening for weeks on end.
Steve: It is alleged that this is due to the wait for parts or for machinery that has been removed for repairs to come back from the shop. From my point of view, it is hard to believe that all of the lengthy outages are caused by this, but rather than poor work scheduling also plays a factor.
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[Steve: This item has been added by removing identifying information about a specific individual. The issue is that such people and corporate attitudes exist.]
I add my Finch Station experience to the escalator comments. It’s a triple whammy: the impact of failing escalators, elevators and bad attitude!
I got off the subway and was walking towards the bus platform and could see from a distance the third bus level elevator was down thanks to a large printed sign taped to the doors. Great to see a sign (professionally designed in colour!) showing the TTC was aware of the problem. The sign’s alternate wayfinding instructions were a tad bizarre though: reverse direction back down to the Collector level, out the paid area and through the North American Life building (‘s two elevators) up to the street … then go north on the west side of Yonge to the first southbound bus stop and take any TTC bus south back into the Finch Bus station—a 200m+ hike, then take my northbound 60 Steeles West bus (who says station accessibility has to be expensive?).
No, problem, I’ll take my walker up the escalator. I had been so focused on the elevator sign I was surprised to now see the “Up” escalator to the bus level was also down … oooh-ooooh, so I pressed the elevator’s “Talk for Help” button (an oxymoron as it turned out) and before I could say boo, the Collector told me “The elevator is down” in a tone that said “DOH.. can’t you read the sign nincompoop?” I politely said, “Yes, I know the elevator is down, but so is the “Up” escalator. I wondered if you could have a janitor come and reverse the “Down” escalator?” The Collector said “I’ll have to see if there is a Janitor but first I’ll have to call it in to get permission as ‘they tell us which way to run the escalators’, then I’ll have to find a janitor, one with keys” (whom I’d just passed and said hello to as he’d emptied the garbage bins beside Collector’s booth). I said “OK” and waited for her to call me back or hopefully see the janitor walking towards me with escalator keys in his hand.
I waited some 10 minutes, no janitor or intercom response (despite standing in the Collector’s CCTV view of elevator) so I walked back down to the Collector booth. The Collector was counting money so I didn’t interrupt. I waited until she finished and asked her if she had received permission to reverse the upper level escalator and found a janitor to do so. She told me “she had called in and couldn’t reverse the escalator as I was using a walker and walkers weren’t allowed on escalators”, notwithstanding that I was quite willing and able to fold my walker and carry it up with me, and ignoring other patrons who could navigate steps down but not climb stairs up. After further discussion, I realized she just wasn’t into disability, she was going by the book, so I took leave, left the paid area, walked through the NA Life building with it’s two working elevators, and just to be defiant, crossed Yonge and walked directly into the bus bays. Such a rebel!
This was not an isolated incident at Finch. In 2005, I successively found each of the (3) Finch elevators out-of-service, when I was travelling via bus/subway to three critical hospital appointments. I was a wheelchair novice and could no longer easily navigate around escalators and elevators shutdowns. On the first occasion, April 16th the third subway platform elevator was down so I improvised and went back up to the bus bay and took accessible Finch West and Leslie buses to NYGH, instead of the Yonge/Sheppard subway lines. On my next subway trip, July 7th, to TGH I was stuck on the bus level as its elevator was out-of-service. A TTC driver on break saw my dilemma and using his own initiative took me down the escalator in my wheelchair, likely violating every TTC safety and liability policy in the process, but I’ll never forget his simple act of human kindness; just as I’ll never forget the Finch Collector who hid behind TTC policy and was oblivious to the concept of customer service let alone for the disabled.
On the third hospital trip to Mount Sinai, August 8th Finch’s mid-elevator was DOA, so I rode the wheelchair down the escalator so I wasn’t late for early morning surgery. Escalator and elevator failures at high volume stations like Finch are a disaster for the disabled, especially given all the inter-connecting TTC and regional bus routes, and should have be on the highest repair priority.
In retrospect, while my experiences with failed Finch elevators and escalators mirror others, and seem all too common, the TTC Collector’s attitude was the exception, not the rule. TTC Operators, Collectors, Wheel Trans Drivers (bus & contract) and Passengers have been incredibly accommodating and compassionate to me; lowering ramps, hand-lifting my wheelchair when ramps failed, kneeling buses, lifting my walker for me, giving up seats, smiling, asking if I’m OK… making it a real pleasure (and incentive) to still travel about Toronto on regular TTC.
Steve: This horror story needs to be read by every senior member of TTC management who similarly hides behind policies and procedures, and whose “solution” to problems is to install a fortune in technology to monitor equipment rather than just paying someone to go and look at it now and then, and restart it if necessary.
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I was going to leave this, as it is getting off topic, however I must address the implication that my ‘rant’ was intended to be against the union with Steve’s opening remarks, “This is addressed to readers in general, not just to the writer above. We need to stop trying to blame the problems of the universe on unions and start looking at the culture of large organizations.”
The whole maintenance priority (or lack thereof) is certainly an issue of the culture of the TTC as a whole, and I never intended to suggest the union is a cause, directly or indirectly, to the problem. In terms of unions, they have their good points and their bad points, and many of the bad points culminate from individuals, not the union movement as a whole. It is the thoughts, perceptions, and actions of individuals that was really the heart of my ‘rant’.
The culture as a whole can have an effect on the actions of individuals. We all know that the world if filled with far too many pedantic busy-bodies who take things as an end in themselves instead of a means to an end. The employee that has good intentions often find themselves having to curb their common sense to act on those intentions because of the knowledge that so-and-so will raise a stink because it doesn’t “fit the model” somehow.
This is what I was getting at with the “It’s not my job” attitude. Whether the busy-body is armed with a collective agreement of a union, or whether it is some set of corporate policies, the bottom line is that people tend to be hesitant to be helpful when faced with the possibility of some hassle that could result from stepping outside of the box.
The corporate culture at the TTC should place customer service at the top (well, perhaps second to safety). Rules and procedures are supposed to be a means to THAT end, but there are enough people who live to enforce rules for the sake of the rules and nothing else.
Steve: You will be interested to learn that at today’s TTC meeting, a motion was passed asking management to figure out how to make someone responsible for seeing that stations in their area have working elevators and escalators. We may see “Station Managers” yet.
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Janitors are given keys, along with collectors most of the time. But most problems cant be fixed just with turning a key, the controller must be reset and by a mechanic. Most problems are caused by kids finding the safety switches and killing the machine. They think its something “cool” to see.
Steve: Sorry, but the times and locations I see machines out of service do not correspond with places where “kids” are going to hang about causing problems. This excuse fits in with the TTC’s general pattern of saying that anything that goes wrong is someone else’s fault.
“Kids” stopping escalators are in the same league as “traffic congestion” fouling up bus and streetcar service. Yes, both happen, but they are not, by a long shot, the only reason for problems, just a handy scapegoat.
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I agree with you that kids stopping the machines isn’t always the case, but you would be surprised to see how often it does really happen. Other than that, I can throw you a hand full of probable situations that can cause a machine to stop like over-weight luggage bags, baby carriages, bikes, and other objects not made for escalators.
Then you have horseplay on machines, falling accidents, ignorant people stopping machines, and weather conditions (temperature, or salt/water) to name a few. But yes mechanical problems do happen alot surely, like any machine that runs 19-24 hours of the day. But you can’t blame only the TTC or its maintanance department for these stoppages.
Steve: I am not blaming them for the stoppages. The long-standing complaint people have is that they see escalators running in malls and other locations all the time and they are rarely if ever stopped except for maintenance which is clearly underway. Yes, someone has to come and restart the escalator, but there appear to be far to few too perform this work. Escalators are an important part of the system because they provide a vital part of the accessability features in stations. It’s a lot cheaper to have working escalators (and elevators) than to carry people on wheel-trans or in cabs because they can’t count on the escalators.
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