Despite the seemingly vast superiority of Metro's camera surveillance system, and its attendant ROC room—not to mention the propensity of the agency's smaller bureaucrats to bloviate—there remains a huge problem with the Red Line's escalators that could be better solved with the hardware already installed. It seems so simple, and yet no-one at Metro—even those marginally connected—could conceive the bleeding obvious.
According to at least one Metro employee, there are loads of folk who carry that golden escalator key—so why are so many of the escalators so frequently not working?
"As someone who carries a set of keys to restart Metro Rail escalators, I can tell you that Shawn is correct. I have actually seen the dorks do it (and boy are they surprised when I take out my keys and immediately restart it).
There is one other factor, which may be triggered by dorky teens or other idiots: If someone kicks the side panel near where it protects the side of the steps in just the right way, it trips a safety switch stopping the escalator. If that happens, my key will not restart it and Mitsubishi techs have to come take apart the side panels to reset the switch. (This may seem like insider information, but I am told by Mitsubishi that it is standard on all escalators and is apparently already well-known by dorks and idiots.)
And, to satisfy everyone’s curiosity, here is a partial list of people who carry escalator keys …
Sheriff’s deputies
Metro Rail supervisors and management
Private security officers at the stations
Station clean-up personnel
Roger Snoble
… and one Governance Councilmember
The number of merely "partial" keys in service seems to greatly outnumber the Metro escalators, let alone the Metro escalators that are allegedly stopped by schoolchildren. Unfortunately, it seems that the soft wares behind the software may well be the problem.
Just as The Bus Bench recently exhibited a decent idea for promoting the Gold Line, an idea that would have been immediately obvious to those who promote mass transit even as they fervently avoid it, so too would Occam's Razor have one less victim if only Metro would seek a simple solution.
Despite some Metro employees' claims that non-working escalators are caused primarily by schoolchildren engaging the emergency stop buttons, one wonders why a remedial resolution could be instated were ROC personnel (as seen in this photograph) Photo credit: LARHF to take a moment to alert someone at the respective station—say, a custodian, or one of the ever-present sheriff's deputy sipping coffee and generally wasting time above ground—to turn on the damn thing. After all, there are cameras directly above nearly all the escalators. And since there are sure to be some naysayers to the bleeding obvious about cameras, escalators and all that, be sure to stay tuned over the next week or so as each day brings a new video of a different station exhibiting the proximity of Metro's "security" cameras in clear view of non-working escalators.
For folk who ride just the Red Line and observe people having to wait for the lift when the up escalator is not working, I need not explain myself. (Most angelinos have a problem walking to their car from the front door; to walk up three flights of steep steps is heart-attack-inducing by thought alone.) As such, the all-too-frequent problem of broken-down Metro escalators is a big problem.
The solution seems so easy. But perhaps that is the very reason it has yet to be instituted.
-BusTard
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