Politics & Government

Bart Fixes 10 Escalators; 19 Still Broken

Number of outages unusual, transit agency says.

In its efforts to alleviate an unusually large number of escalator outages, BART repaired 10 broken escalators throughout the system this week, including four in the East Bay and four in downtown San Francisco, agency officials said.

As of Friday morning, 19 escalators remained out of service systemwide, and BART will continue its push to return all escalators to working order. The escalators repaired this week are in the Embarcadero, Powell Street, Montgomery, Daly City, 19th Street Oakland, Dublin/Pleasanton, West Dublin Pleasanton and South Hayward stations.

To assist with the repair effort, BART has hired workers from four private contractors, and will add a fifth to the effort Monday to supplement BART crews.

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"This is nothing less than a full court press to get these escalators back in service," BART Assistant General Manager of Operations Paul Oversier said in a press statement. "We know the escalator outages are frustrating for many of our customers."

BART operates 179 escalators and 140 elevators in its 44 stations.

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Agency officials said the goal is to keep 95 percent of escalators and 98 percent of elevators in service at all times.

-- Bay City News Service


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