MARTA close to finishing costly escalator repairs

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By Kristi E. Swartz

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

MARTA has finished repairing nearly all of its escalators and elevators five months after a safety violation triggered a system-wide inspection of them.

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MARTA customers had been forced to use stairways at the Five Points Station after MARTA shut down 100 of its 149 escalators in January.

Hyosub Shin, hshin@ajc.com MARTA customers had been forced to use stairways at the Five Points Station after MARTA shut down 100 of its 149 escalators in January.

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Of the transit agency’s 149 escalators, 125 have been inspected and are operating, MARTA deputy general manager Dwight Ferrell told the AJC. An additional dozen await repairs. Five of those 12 should be finished by next week.

As for the rest, they will be repaired once the parts come in, Ferrell said. And that may not be right away.

“We’ve done so much work on our escalators at this time that we’ve drained down the nationwide inventory of parts,” Ferrell said.

MARTA shut down 100 of its 149 escalators in January after learning that a mechanic working for an outside contractor had bypassed a safety circuit on an escalator at the Dunwoody station.

The shutdown came after MARTA determined that the mechanic had worked on or inspected scores of the machines.

For some, the parts actually have to be made because that particular type of escalator is no longer manufactured, he said.

MARTA still has more work to do, Ferrell said. Four of the escalators at the Peachtree Center station still need work. MARTA right now has extra staffers at those escalators, Ferrell said.

“Because of the complexities of the Peachtree station, we didn’t want to take those down until we had something to replace them with,” he said.

The project ran over MARTA's elevator and escalator maintenance budget by $2 million, Ferrell said. The money was cut out of the transit agency’s bottom line, he said.

“We had savings in the bottom line that we were able to achieve,” he said, which helps cover the costs of the project.

MARTA hired two companies -- Schindler Elevator Corp. to repair the escalators and Vertical Transportation Excellence Corp. to inspect them.

“We certainly feel that our escalators are in better shape than before we started this project,” Ferrell said.

MARTA as an agency cannot file criminal charges against the contractor who circumvented safety procedures by "jumping" the safety circuit on an escalator at the Dunwoody station, spokesman Lyle Harris said Tuesday.

After an additional review, however, MARTA will give the paperwork to the Georgia Department of Labor, which has oversight. Officials are considering giving the information to the district attorney’s office to review as well, Harris said.

Elevator Specialists Inc., the company that the contractor worked for, has filed for bankruptcy protection, MARTA officials said. MARTA terminated its contract with ESI in January after it learned of the safety violation.