Your Subway Station May Finally Get an Elevator

"As we disembark from the G train at the Smith-9th Streets station, Matt Best issues a challenge: Think about how we'd get from here to the street without using the stairs. Best is the chief engineer of the construction-and-development division at the MTA, and he and Jamie Torres-Springer, who runs the division, are showing me how they plan to add an elevator to this station."

"Smith-9th is built on a trestle over the Gowanus Canal, and as we make our way down three levels, platform to crossover to mezzanine to turnstiles, they point out a roadblock at every turn: a girder that would make it nearly impossible to put in an elevator shaft here, a stairwell that blocks it there, a platform that, if extended, would go over some private property. Then we get to the exit, and it's four extra steps down to the curb."

"There, at the other end of the station, they're planning a pair of 90-foot-high elevator towers from scratch, one on each side of the trestle, that will go directly to the platform. Each will sit mostly on a patch of land that is now occupied by a scrapyard that is, as some document digging eventually revealed, already city-owned, rented out for so many years that the tenants don't have a copy of their lease."

Smith-9th Streets station sits on a trestle over the Gowanus Canal with platforms, crossover, mezzanine, and turnstiles separated by multiple levels. Structural elements—girders, stairwells, and existing platforms—make installing a continuous elevator shaft from street to platform unfeasible and would require three separate shafts and a rebuilt entrance. Flood-avoidant design adds four extra steps at the curb. The chosen solution is construction of two 90-foot elevator towers, one on each side of the trestle, providing direct platform access. Towers will occupy mostly city-owned scrapyard parcels and may require purchase of small land from a nearby Lowe's. Tall stairwells will accompany each elevator.

Read at Curbed