Metro’s $30 Million Staircase in North Hollywood

It’s not me, it’s you.

I don’t try to beat anything like a dead horse, but my level of frustration with the west portal’s lack of functionality at the North Hollywood Station is reaching an all-time high.

Earlier this month, I wrote an article bringing this issue to light with some tempered anger hoping to get some buzz to actually fix this newly built piece of infrastructure.

Mind you, it wasn’t built on the cheap.

If you’re spending $30 million to get two elevators, two escalators and a staircase, they better work everyday least they be plated in gold.


After I posted my initial article, I laid off posting my daily mishaps at the station just from fatigue, but in the last two weeks my frustration has grown along with the number of breakdowns.

Now I don’t take the subway everyday.

Weekends I don’t normally ride and for the summer our office is closed on Fridays.

Yet everytime I took the subway this past month, it has never been fully functional.

If you don’t believe me, check my twitter.

A majority of the time, at least one of two elevators weren’t working.

As for consistency, the bottom escalator NEVER worked.

This isn’t a condition that’s just popped up the last month, but even when it was working a few months ago, it was still operational 50 percent of the time.

Yesterday, I was about to nearly lose it seeing everything broke!

 

When I got to the west portal, the senior standing next to me was not happy that the only offering on this side of the station was to use the stairs. Sure, she could backtrack to the eastside and take one of the functioning escalators or elevators to the surface and then cross Lankershim, but what’s the point of the east access point if it never works? I don’t know how all this money has been spent. We know for sure that this has been built incorrectly, but even seeing repair work done from time to time, how come this problem never gets resolved? It’s time we hold Metro accountable for this fiasco and ask where this money has gone.