Memo

To: Vincent Boudreau, President of CCNY

From: Simon Au, Student

Date: February 2^nd, 2020

Subject: Unreliable Escalators

 

Purpose

        My purpose for writing to you today is to inform you about the current situation regarding the escalators within the North Academic Center building and to propose a possible solution to resolve the issue.

 

Summary

        During my time at the North Academic Center located on the campus of the City College of New York, many students have taken notice that the escalators throughout the building often break down and require maintenance. Frequently, the escalators connecting the lobby to the second floor have broken down, requiring students to share one escalator when moving between classes. Other escalators such as the fourth to fifth floor escalators on occasions break down, causing massive congestion during the busy hours of the day. What concerns students the most is the squeaking occurring on all escalators, which is a clear indication of wear and should be investigated as soon as possible for safety reasons.

 

Discussion

        With the escalators at the North Academic Center building in this state, there are countless liabilities waiting to happen if the problem is not resolved soon. The first problem that needs to be addressed would have to be the congestion created by the malfunctioning escalators. Whenever one of the escalators break down, staff would need to block off the traffic before repairs can take place. This leaves only one side of the escalators open, creating bottlenecks for people traversing between floors. With these bottlenecks occurring, lateness in both the students and faculty become more common, resulting in less class time. Other forms of traversing through the building such as the elevators often hold less capacity than that of the escalators. As for stairs, they seem to be very unpopular, as many students are reluctant to climb up six to eight floors for a class. With escalators being the most popular and moving the most capacity at one time, having them break down would clearly cause traffic related problems within the North Academic Center building.

        Another problem with the escalators is liabilities regarding the safety of the students. Throughout the past few years, there have been many cases reported on the news of people rolling down escalators due to abrupt pausing of escalators as well as being crushed by escalators due to malfunctions. One clear example could be found when searching Chinese Woman killed by escalator, killing the woman due to a malfunction in 2015. Other examples are easily found if you search up Escalator Pile Up on Google, NBC news, and CNN. With these videos reported throughout the years, it proves that these malfunctions are not rare. These malfunctions often accompany clear indication that something is wrong, such as squeaking of the gears and shaking as it moves. The escalators at the North Academic Center also shake and often squeaks throughout the day. Given these similarities, as a precaution, these safety concerns are must be addressed and fixed as soon as possible as there are nearly fifteen thousand students attending this college and the escalators are one of the most popular mode of traveling due to accessibility and convenience.

 

Recommendation

        I recommend replacing the escalators that often break down with newer versions. When researching websites offering advice and services regarding escalators, I found that a healthy escalator should last for six months before maintenance and generally doesn’t need replacing for years. This information brings up the point that by buying a new escalator, there should be a guaranteed that it would work for years, making it a viable investment for the school. In addition, with maintenance generally taking place every six months for newer escalators, there should be little need for repairs throughout the fall and spring semesters. A very well-known company called Schindler specializes in replacing escalators and elevators. Looking through their brochures and information, there are multiple models of escalators with varying benefits. Although Schindler do not want to give an exact cost for the replacement of the six escalators, it is known that escalators range anywhere from fifty thousand dollars to nearly a hundred thousand dollars. Through this, I estimate the escalators alone would be $540,000. With the addition of installation costs and a lengthy construction involved in the replacement, the school would need to allocate an estimated cost of 5-6 million. This may seem a lot, but fixing this problem is worth the cost as the liability could cost you millions. To save money from this large project, we could replace only the first-floor escalators and repair the higher floors, cutting the costs to around 1.2 million. A college such as City College could make this type of cash back easily and since this is a public college, federal funding is also a viable method of paying since this is for the safety of the students. Please consider proposal as a possible solution for the problem and look forward to discussing with you more on this topic.