UPDATE: Tuesday on July 29 at 8 a.m.: The elevators at the 72nd Street 1, 2, and 3 station will now close around August 25 for replacement work, an MTA spokesperson confirmed to West Side Rag. Initially, the MTA said the elevators would close on July 28.
The spokesperson added that the pushed back start date will not effect the timeline of the project finishing at the end of March, 2026, but did not specify why the beginning of the work had been delayed a month.
By Gus Saltonstall
The elevators at a busy Upper West Side train station will be closed for around the next eight months, according to signage from the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
The pair of elevators that service the uptown and downtown platforms of the 72nd Street 1, 2, and 3 station will be out of service through the end of March 2026, in order to complete replacement work, newly posted signage within the station reads.
The current elevators will close “on or about” Monday, July 28, and then remain closed through the first quarter of 2026, which is the end of March, the poster reads.
The new elevators will have “better reliability,” “modernized equipment,” a “smoother ride” and “upgraded security systems,” according to the MTA.
The MTA recommends going to either the West 96th Street or West 66th Street stations for elevator access, while the replacement work at 72nd Street is ongoing.
During the project, temporary barricades will be placed throughout the 72nd Street station, and a 90-foot construction staging area will be erected along the outside of the station within Verdi Square. The square will still remain open and accessible during the work.
The staging area will be removed when the work is complete.
“We appreciate your patience as we undertake these essential upgrades to enhance system reliability and accessibility for all,” an additional MTA sign posted within the 72nd Street station reads.
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I personally don’t need or use them, but this should be absolutely unacceptable to a community. 8 months to replace elevators in an existing shaft?! Is there actually significant construction needed, or is it just/mostly an equipment replacement?
Thank the unions and corrupt building industry.
This comment is infuriating. Please provide evidence to support this accusation.
Take a look at Fed building renovation. Its now a 2 billion project due to a cost overrun of 938 million
Has nothing to do with any labor union.
City labor union members are underworked with archaic work rules and excessive pay and BENEFITS 2 to 3X the private sectors.
There are lots of obese bus drivers etc. who are causing city health costs to skyrocket.
Can you provide specific evidence for this claim?
Just ranting about unions and corruption doesn’t readily explain why 20 year old elevators need to be completely replaced.
Take a look at the NYU site below and or just google the expense overruns
It should not cost 250 million for each mile of subways bulit and be decades late.
See NY Times etc on cost of Long Island Access and Pat II of second ave subway
https://transitcosts.com/
You’ve not explained why 20 year old elevators need to be replaced.
Right.
And the elevators are only 20 years old. What’s up with that, did the MTA skip so much basic maintenance that the elevators were destroyed?
Perhaps all of the urine made them deteriorate more rapidly. I’m serious.
Elevators that get excessive 24/7 usage are lucky to make it 20 years without having a major replacement. Add to that the abuse public transit elevators take with vandalism, urine soaking, exposure to the elements, the fact they made it that long is impressive.
Elevator replacement projects, if funded and planned before failure should only take 2 weeks per floor but if you wait until they fail and cannot be repaired, add an additional 40+ weeks minimum for engineering, bidding, award if the contract, material production, then demo, install and passing inspection.
Unclear. I doubt anyone ever complained about the smoothness of the ride, or an non-upgraded security system (what, the camera is a bit old, cue 8-month construction project?). Can anyone opine if they were broken/unreliable that often?
I use them randomly whenever I go to the airport. No, never seen them broken. Lived here 12 years
Or, and I’m being serious, grossly substandard elevators were during construction in 2003-5.
Right, details about why a full replacement is needed after only 20 years is missing. It’s not like they’re ATMs which need to be replaced every time Microsoft stops updating Windows OS whatever.
Unacceptable. 8 months to replace an elevator? No private building would accept that kind of timeline. Parents need this for stroller access to the subway.
Not that the elevator timeline is acceptable (it isn’t), but can we have a word about strollers, please?
The US is the only country I’ve lived in where babies seemingly *must* come with an SUV-sized Entitlement Vehicle.
It’s a lot easier to adapt to missing elevators if you pack light.
I can’t even begin to tell you how horribly this will affect us. I’m devastated. How can we demand a faster timeline!! Is there anything anyone can do? Where do we channel this frustration into change?
I was on to this MONTHS ago. This city & its corp surrogates are out of tune, touch and concers rather prioritizes polemics and criminal sanctuary policies over qol, public safety, fiscal competence. Even though an asteroid has yet to strike NYC, its public threshold for the laughable incompetence is at nadir breaking point which dems will discover in November; they wont be laughing.
The City doesn’t run the MTA.
Can they also fix the leaking roof that now seems to be 24/7/365? It’s on the North side of Broadway and 72nd. Will that take even more time? Regular repairs and maintenance seem to be lacking.
The MTA needs to be replaced with a private corporation that makes money.
A lot of the problems with NYC subways stem from the private companies that built most of the lines.
“making money” often means reduction and degradation in services, see private medical coverage.
Your comment is humorous. The IRT subway line was opened in 1904, 121 years ago.
And a lot of the problems with the IRT system stem from it being built by a private company, eg trench cut “tunnels”; they flood really easily.
Making money means running the business efficiently.
A solid understanding of basic economics sure does come in handy, doesn’t it?
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-art-of-the-really-stupid-deal
Um, like Boeing?
Like disastrous OSs from Microsoft?
Making money often degrades services and pollutes unnecessarily.
Can you imagine if the Government built an airplane, or software?
The government issues the regulations and runs the systems that keep us all from dying in the air.
The internet, built by the government.
The government built the Saturn 5. There were no failures of the rocket.
No, it means extracting maximum profit with minimal effort, which is the worst possible approach for a necessary public service.
versus…extracting maximum graft with minimal effort?
As opposed to using revenues to provide quality services that society needs for us all to flourish.
Eight months? 72nd is one of the busiest stations. Not good for the community. I don’t think people carrying heavy shopping bags from the nearby supermarket, or pushing strollers, etc. would go all the way up to West 96th Street or down to West 66th Street stations for elevator access. Bus lines will be longer. MTA could have proposed upgrading one at a time, at least.
Nevermind, on thinking about it I don’t think that you could cross over.
Now that is a good idea since you can easily cross over to the otherside within the station once you are down to station level.
Govt and Unions aren’t incentivized for speed or cost savings. Your job is to exhaust the budget and hire as many as you can to make them dependent. Expect more of this as the DSA takes over. This is what you want, this is what you get. And the legislature will fight for worker rights.
Quick quiz, who from the DSA is in charge of he MTA now?
Please do not be surprised.
In MTA time-frames 8 months is quick.
Vote better.
Pataki was running the MTA when these elevators were installed.
George Pataki left office on December 31, 2006. By all means we should hold him accountable for the ensuing 18 1/2 years of elevator maintenance, or lack thereof.
Steve M:
The problem is that we don’t know the why of this replacement.
Were the wrong elevators installed to begin with, during the Pataki years.
Or did the correct elevators wear out way too soon because of incompetent maintenance must of which occurred after Pataki no longer controlled the MTA?
I’m going to seriously bite my tongue and clench my teeth here, but wasn’t this station “improvement” courtesy of a trade off with (now) Pres. Trump for the Riverside complex? If so (and let me hide under the bed here…) how about calling the Trump Org. and seeing if they can speed things up ?
(I’ve activated my Romulan invisibility shield, so don’t even think of finding me).
Elevator repair could become the next Trump Steaks!
It was called a cloaking device.
Harry Potter stole a lot from Star Trek.
P.S.: It just occurred to me that the MTA’s “eight months” may just be the Scotty Time.
I wouldn’t know about Harry Potter, but when you have a major world cultural phenomenon, borrowing happens.
How so ?
MTA is no mystery to me( once you understand the ethos ),
but Harry Potter stealing from Star Trek, has piqued my curiousity ?
At least the MTA is faster than NYCHA.
Sounds like 74 st Jackson heights 8 months already.atill not back in service. Good luck!!!
And more problematic when buses are rerouted for street fairs, bike events, etc
In China, they built 5 km long bridges over a 2000 foot abysss in two years. In the NYC,, replacing an elevator takes two years. And the one they are building at 81st St. takes three years to install And the Rotunda at 79th St. takes three years to “remodel“. I can’t wait until Tesla‘s Optimus replaces these lazy construction crews (cruise?).
Interesting that none of us seemed to have had any idea that this was going to happen until 6 days before the start of work. The MTA must have known about this station for a while, but apparently kept it secret until the last minute.
And that’s what exactly is going to happen to the West 81st St./CPW subway elevator once it open after the first 30 days.
It will take forever to repair it because New York City pre-maintenance does not stock up it’s parts.
While I’m at a loss about the commenters who purportedly live in NYC yet don’t know who’s in charge of the subway, I do think eight months, announced barely a week in advance apparently, is insane. (Yes, the planning and any subcontracting might take that long, but you don’t need to take the elevators out of service for that!). The M104 will probably be the best option for many people now, but it’s not going to be fun.
Cue the outrage from Nadler and Brewer.
Maybe they can have some influence on the schedule ?
Neither of whom is elected to serve in state government, and it’s the state that operates the MTA.
Albeit, so far, but it’s only been a day or two, crickets from Linda Rosenthal, whose office is basically across the street.
We all get the government we deserve. The rot of the MTA is visible in the accumulated filth on every surface we see in every station. Do you think we aren’t paying through the nose for union workers to _not_ clean these stations? Republicans can’t fix this. Democrats can’t fix this. Bloomberg wouldn’t touch this with a ten foot pole. We need to go to Albany and basically fire everyone at the MTA, change its charter, cancel all the contracts and start over with an entirely new management structure. It will require a massive bipartisan effort and likely a reboot of our state’s entire political party system. Whoever thinks it should all be privatized is forgetting that it _was_ private businesses that built this mess in the first place and then they all had to be taken over by the MTA. These public authorities were designed by very tough people for minimum oversight and maximum corruption and power accumulation. Good luck with that. Oy.
No, how about we just tax everyone who drives, gets things delivered, taxes taxis, or uses products that are delivered instead?
More money will surely fix the problem.
of a corrupt, money-burning bureaucracy!
OUTRAGEOUS!!!!
That it will take so long to replace an elevator in an existing elavator shaft is evidence that our society is on the decline as the Roman Empire was. And FYI: Putting in a new elevator where there is no shaft takes multiple years. See CPW and 81st or 07th.
Heres hoping they have a better contactor and get an extended warranty on the new ones, as the current ones were only put in place in 2002. Regular preventative maintenance, repairs etc ok, but they should not need a total replacement after just 23 years.
The MTA unfortunately regularly differs maintenance until they break down.
It might speed things up if they did at least two work shifts from 07.00 to 19.00 and do something that Guliani did with contract….everyday over contract deadline, you lose X amount, everyday before that day and you get X more.
The MTA is a criminal organization.
1) why can’t they repair one elevator at a time?
2) why don’t they have a guard or police officer operating the elevators to avoid their abuse by riders? In the rnd, the salaries would total less than the replacements, plus the elevators wouldn’t smell or look like garbage cans or public toilets?
A cop running an elevator to make sure people don’t pee in them?
Why can’t the replace one elevator at a time.? That’s what my apartment building did so we were not without an elevator.
Well, then one direction of train service would still be without an elevator.
If the elevator to the uptown platform was out of service, you’d have to go 42nd street to transfer (66th and 59th wouldn’t work assuming you can’t climb stairs).
The escalators at Columbus Circle have been out of service for 18 months with a projected reopening on October 31. This is the 4th date that has been proffered and each has been missed. Ditto for the escalators at 53rd and Lex…over 2 years. The station manager assured me they would open on March 31 and each month the date is extended. Why should anyone believe what the MTA says?
I agree those escalators have been out WAY too long, but the escalators at Columbus Circle are part of an entrance that is privately operated and maintained by the Deutsche Bank Center, not the MTA. Current estimate is that they will be out until November according to this CBS story that blames structural damage at the station. https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/columbus-circle-subway-escalator-outage/
What about compliance with the ADA – Americans with Disabilities Act requiring equal access and accommodations? I am sure the advocates are already researching this. Eight months is too long for lack of access for those with mobility issues.
It took thirteen and a half months to build the Empire State Building . Elevators and all. What has changed?
Well, once again handicapped citizens are screwed, as well as the elderly with mobility issues. Understandably, mechanical technology will break down over time, but the timeframe for the replacement seems a bit long, but what do I know?
This should take two weeks tops. Please call another company.
Tell transit to announce on the train that elevator is not working. People will not remember for 8 months .
It’s an outrageous amount of time. This will make the subway unusable for disabled and handicapped people. But who cares!
they said it with time but the elevator pieces when they going to ask for the pieces to the replacement is going to be ready to the 2029 look the 3 ave 149 st take forever
This is such a waste of time and money. I have ridden these elevators since they were built and never had a problem. Now they will be out of service for what they say is 8 months but is sure to be much, much longer. They should check to see if any maintenance is needed to the current elevators and then move on. There are so many areas in the subway where this money would be better spent. Who makes these decisions and do they ever actually check with the people who use them?
MTA, MONEY TAKING ASSOCIATION, needs an efficiency check similar to DOGE and top management replacement. Where is Musk when needed???
Why does it take 8 months to replace an elevator. With proper planning, they should be able to do this in 2 months. Way too long and way too much.
It’s amazing that it takes 8 months. The ones on 66th street and Broadway took a year or more. That’s longer or as long than some of the building being built on the Upper West Side! What up with that?!
only on the mta system can elevator and escalator work take so much time. the consultants to the consultants need to go
Any idea when or if the escalator at Columbus Circle will be repaired?