South San Francisco, CA February 19, 2015
The SSF BART station escalator was not working
Photo Greg Costigan
This past Tuesday Greg Costigan posted this photo and question to our Facebook page, “Anyone else wonder why the South San Francisco BART escalator breaks every other day?” which brought about a flurry of comments from our neighbors. While conversation amongst ourselves is good, we wanted to know when the escalator would be repaired, especially after reading Marisa Tamburini Meier’s post “Don’t make fun of this, please. My mother had to go to the hospital after climbing those stairs because elevator and escalator were broken.”
Within a day of inquiry to BART, Everything South City received a reply from BART Power & Mechanical Acting Assistant Superintendent Mike Lemon. “Currently all conveyance at South San Francisco is in service. Recently Platform Escalator #1 was down from 2/13/15 to 2/17/15. Repairs have been completed and the unit has not had any further failures.”
While many neighbors had encouraged taking the stairs when the escalator or elevator isn’t working Rose Chang Chiu explained “All 60 horrible steps up. The elevator does work, but it’s very slow. The point is that we should expect the escalators to work almost all the time.” Evan Klein agreed “I had to help someone up in a cast because there was no elevator or escalator.”
Sharon Sumner Albera shared her observation “It’s been doing that for years (not working). I think they turned it off to save money.” Gloria Ortega said she had no idea it wasn’t working. “No problem with the Daly City escalators… Parking is the only challenge there…“
On behalf of the Bay Area Rapid Transit Elevator and Escalator department, we sincerely apologize for the inconveniences and hardships patrons have encountered due to out of service conveyances located at our South San Francisco Station.
I assure you, the District is committed to improving reliability through asset life cycle rehabilitation and replacement. Our Engineering and Maintenance departments are finalizing the specifics on a needed District wide Escalator renovation program.
The District understands this does not alleviate our immediate need to improve current reliability. Over the last year, our Elevator / Escalator Maintenance department has implemented a Reliability Centered Maintenance program and taken drastic measures to reevaluate and improve Preventative Maintenance, inventory material management, and annual conveyance permitting inspections, in order to provide a safer more reliable product to our customers.
There is still a great deal of work to be done to ensure a State of Good Repair and improved reliability is achieved on District conveyance. We do not take this task lightly and are working diligently to improve customer satisfaction through improved availability and reliability.
In addition, after reviewing the picture you forwarded, I’d like to mention our efforts to improve patron conveyance barricades and notifications. (Please reference the attached image of improved / safer barricades). If the unit has to be out of service due to safety concerns, the patrons should know our staff is working on the matter and a target return to service date should be indicated on the sign.
We know BART would not exist without the support of dedicated patrons such as yourself. Thank you for communicating your observations and concerns to us and again apologize for any inconvenience or hardships you have encountered during your years of patronage. We will share your message with our staff and continue striving to improve conveyance performance.
Thank you for your patronage, patience and understanding.
The new improved / safer barricades will include the estimated date of repair
