Elevator and Escalator Maintenance and Safety Practices

Abstract

The purpose of this synthesis is to document highly specialized elevators/escalators (El/Es) maintenance, safety practices, and passenger communication efforts at five U.S. transit agencies: MARTA (Atlanta, Georgia), NYCTA (New York City), SEPTA (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), CTA (Chicago, Illinois), and BART (San Francisco, California). These five agencies together operate 1,418 elevators and escalators throughout 850 rail stations. Together, they are part of a Federal Transit Administration (FTA)-sponsored consortium with the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), Amalgamated Transit Union, and the Learning Center, engaged in developing a Transit Elevator/Escalator Maintenance Training and Apprenticeship Program. The Topic Panel directed the consultant to survey and conduct in-depth telephone interviews with these transit agencies' staffs to provide a comprehensive look at how representative agencies provide El/Es services, the specific challenges they face in doing so, and the steps taken to provide safe and reliable access to all their customers and, particularly, the disabled community. The goal is to allow others to benefit from the successful experiences of their peers in providing safe and reliable access to users and lessen unnecessary expenditures. A review of the relevant literature was conducted for this effort. Collected literature was useful, but somewhat limited. It was determined that in-depth case studies would provide more thorough synthesis reporting of El/Es subject areas at select agencies and be more beneficial and useful to other transit agencies than cursory synthesis survey reporting of numerous subject areas across a larger number of agencies.