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Posted by
Gold_12th
on Thu May 29 13:10:32 2014
edf40wrjww2msgDetail:detailStr fiogf49gjkf0d The fate of the newest addition to the New York City subway system could be traced last summer to the foothills of Appiano Gentile, at a work site beneath the northern Italian sun.
After six years of construction, the No. 7 train extension to the Far West Side of Manhattan was to open before the end of 2013, in time for the departing mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, whose administration paid for the project, to take a ceremonial ride.
But there was a problem: A custom-designed, diagonal elevator for the new No. 7 train station at 34th Street and 11th Avenue had unexpectedly failed its factory test at the manufacturer’s headquarters in the province of Como.
Transit officials peppered the company, Maspero Elevatori, with questions. Could the issues be resolved quickly? Would they have to adjust the station’s opening date? Answers were elusive.
“It failed in July,” said Michael Horodniceanu, the president of capital construction at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. “What happens in August in Europe? They said, ‘O.K., we’ll see you after vacation.' ”
This is the anatomy of a transit delay — pocked with tales of an ambitious plan, the vagaries of an Italian summer, an unusual funding model and a complex elevator design that had roots in a global landmark and a pyramid-shaped casino, but not in New York City’s transportation system.
Though disruptions stalk the area’s transportation network at every turn — on platforms, in bus shelters, at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel — they are felt perhaps most acutely in the area’s capital projects.
The Second Avenue subway remains unfinished some 85 years after its conception. A plan to bring the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal has been pushed to at least 2020.
The No. 7 train project, in comparison, is something of a success story. It is now expected to be completed by the end of 2014, extending the line, which now ends at Times Square, to 11th Avenue about a year behind schedule. It cost $2.4 billion — on budget, officials say, though plans for an additional station at 41st Street and 10th Avenue were scrapped. And Mr. Bloomberg did get to ride his train last December, pulling into 34th Street in a makeshift, one-day-only opening ceremony arranged by the transportation authority.
But the station, and its unusual elevator, provide a useful case study in the difficulties of capital construction in the city.
The idea for a diagonal elevator — two, actually, to go with the station’s escalators and vertical elevators — dates to the project’s genesis more than 10 years ago, the authority said. Angling the structures at an incline was thought to be less expensive than tunneling in relatively straight lines, down and across.
It would also prove a boon to wheelchair users, officials said. A traditional vertical elevator from the upper to the lower mezzanine would have left such passengers about 150 feet from a second elevator that could take them to the platform. But because the incline elevators run parallel to the escalators, Mr. Horodniceanu said, “you are providing a similar experience, irrespective of your handicap.”
At a recent transportation authority committee meeting, board members were assured that the technology underpinning their design was nothing new. The Eiffel Tower relied on an incline elevator as early as 1889. And since 1993, similar elevators have operated without major incident at the Luxor Las Vegas.
Before construction began, the transportation authority led an international search for elevator manufacturers, recommending two companies to Skanska, the project’s general contractor: Maspero and Huetter-Aufzuege, in Germany.
Maspero’s résumé was impressive. Its angled lifts, calling to mind Jetsons-style transport pods, have been chosen to climb slopes in the French Riviera, the Kek Lok Si Temple of Malaysia and a Renzo Piano building in Genoa.
Maspero won the New York contract. But project administrators preferred that the software and other components come from American companies with whom they were more familiar.
The controller was made on Long Island. The speed governors, or limiters, came from Ohio. Other pieces, like buttons and speakers, were manufactured in Queens.
“It’s like if Ferrari would be instructed to put in a Chevy engine and a Ford transmission,” said Charley Hart, the project manager for Kone, the company overseeing the elevator and escalator installation. “Yes, it can be done. But it’s a challenge.”
There was also little precedent for such a structure in the American transportation system, and none in New York City’s. The authority has cited stations in Dallas and suburban Washington as predecessors, though the rationales for those projects do not appear to mirror New York’s.
A spokesman for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority said that an incline elevator had been at its Metro rail station in Huntington, Va., since 1983, but that the agency was now unsure why it had been installed.
Mike Hubbell, the vice president for maintenance at Dallas Area Rapid Transit, said the roadway layout adjacent to the Cityplace/Uptown station precluded the construction of a traditional elevator. The two incline elevators there have broken down far more often than their sibling lifts in the system, officials at the agency said.
“They’re big glass boxes,” Mr. Hubbell said, adding, “It is not the most preferred alternative.”
The No. 7 train elevators will look essentially the same. They are to be clamped to guide rails, with roller wheels, and move at a 27-degree angle, traveling roughly 100 feet per minute. (Travel time: 2 minutes; Total length: 172 feet; 81 feet below ground; Doors on opposite ends) About 15 standing people, or five wheelchairs, can fit.
Before the July test last year, the authority said, it knew of no major cause for concern.
The elevator and its assorted pieces passed tests separately, and other construction appeared to be moving apace. Publicly, officials said they remained on track for a Bloomberg-era start date.
But when the parts were integrated for the July test, the system failed. Mr. Horodniceanu has taken to calling the elevator his “mutt,” for its hodgepodge pedigree.
By December, little had changed, except the weather. And factory tests at Maspero were conducted outdoors.
“It was not really looking very good to have another test in Italy over the winter,” Mr. Hart said.
The authority decided to forgo the on-site reviews and complete the testing at the project site in Manhattan. Mr. Horodniceanu told board members last week that frames and trusses for the elevator had since been installed, but not yet tested.
Maspero declined to comment for this article, referring questions to Kone, the contractor.
Transit officials said they were content with the pace of the work, noting that it was not the only hiccup on the project, which the Bloomberg administration agreed to finance as part of the Hudson Yards development. The atypical funding model means that the station will be the first subway extension paid for by the city in more than 60 years.
But this, too, brought complications. Because of delays in negotiations between the city and the developer, the transportation authority was initially prevented from building auxiliary facilities on time, said Mysore L. Nagaraja, the agency’s president of capital construction from 2003 to 2008.
Escalator work has also dragged, and tests for tunnel ventilation fans have been delayed.
Mr. Horodniceanu said a final hurdle for the project would be completing “integrated testing for fire protection,” which requires all structures, including the escalators and incline elevators, to be ready.
It seems quite likely that, even with perfect elevator performance, the project would not have been free of delays.
Yet the authority has taken a longer view. Officials say that by the end of the year, some 27,000 daily riders will use the station, redefining a long-sleepy neighborhood and providing the only true subway link to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.
And in 30 years, if the Washington Metro’s experience is instructive, perhaps no one will remember why the elevators go sideways.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/30/nyregion/trouble-with-diagonal-elevator-held-up-no-7-subway-expansion.html?hp&_r=0
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