Just months after the MTA installed five new elevators at the 161st Street-Yankee Stadium subway station, several were sidelined during baseball season, transit authority data shows — and one lift is expected to remain out of service until winter 2027 because of power problems.
The elevators at the busiest station in The Bronx began returning to action in April after a replacement project that began in November 2024, but have since been in working order at rates far below the 95% systemwide average.
“I take this station every day and they’re always messed up, man,” John Ortiz, 64, said as he cut through the station with the help of a walker. “And it took them almost two years to fix these elevators.”
The City Reporter’s analysis of MTA elevator-availability data for a transit hub that served more than 6.1 million riders on the B, D and 4 lines last year found that the lifts slid from being in service 99% of the time in April to 56% in August, the latest date for which statistics are public.
According to the MTA’s own numbers, there were 37 elevator outages at the station between April and August, including 31 that were unscheduled.
“An elevator that goes out of service is like a team that can’t get past the first round of the playoffs — it’s a failure,” said Joe Rappaport, executive director of Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled. “The MTA has an obligation to keep its elevators up and running, and it failed at Yankee Stadium during the baseball season.”
Jessica Murray, a member of the Elevator Action Group of Rise and Resist, described the disruptions as “pretty concerning.”
“New machines should not be having outages like that,” she said. “People need those elevators, so they’ve got to figure that out.”
The MTA pinned many of the outages on low voltage going into the station and on aged infrastructure in and around the complex.
“As the summer came and the temperatures rose and the electrical grid was strained, the voltage making its way to the elevators was insufficient,” said James Splendore, assistant director for public affairs at MTA Construction & Development. “Upon investigation with our partners at Con Ed, we saw that both Con Ed’s infrastructure, as well as the electrical infrastructure at the station, was causing this low-voltage situation.”
The outages continue indefinitely on Elevator 135, which links the station’s mezzanine with the northbound platform on the B and D lines.
That elevator shutdown, which the MTA projects will extend into “Winter 2027” because of what it termed “Con Edison Power Issues,” has forced some riders to slowly go up and down on station staircases or to use other modes of transportation. On Thursday, the MTA website changed the reason for the outage to read “final contract items.”
The elevator-replacement project was originally supposed to have been completed last December, but instead users of the 161st Street station face a refrain similar to that of Yankees fans — wait ‘til next year.
“We have determined that additional infrastructure needs to be installed on our side of that process to properly feed 135,” Splendore said. “We’re still investigating that, and we should have a work plan together within the next week.”
In the meantime, B and D line riders who rely on the elevator are left looking for alternatives.
Elba Perez, 45, said she regularly goes upstairs from the station to catch a bus back to Kingsbridge in order to avoid juggling her 2-year-old son’s stroller with groceries she picks up at a nearby food pantry.
“It’s not easy to carry, so I have to take the bus,” she said. “It’s not good, it’s not easy, not only for me, but for people in wheelchairs.”
Elevator 131, which moves riders between 161st Street and the station mezzanine, had its 24-hour availability rate plummet from 99% in May to 37% in June, when it was taken out of service until September. According to MTA records, the lift had 12 outages, 10 of them unscheduled, from April until it was removed from service on June 26. The street-level elevator returned to service in late September.
“I was real happy when the one outside was fixed and then it went down again,” said Israel Ortiz, who walks with the help of a cane. “So, what type of work did they do?”
MTA officials told The City Reporter that two elevators at the 161st Street-Yankee Stadium station which returned to service in late September have performed “with minimal disruptions” and that outages have been quickly resolved.
Con Ed spokesperson Ariel Taub said that the utility’s crews last summer “completed work to upgrade and test the electric service that feeds this elevator.”
“We are confident the voltage levels are adequate on our end,” she said.
Elevator Uptime, a software platform that relies on crowdsourcing and agency data to track elevator and escalator outages in transit systems as well as residential and commercial buildings, flagged the Yankee Stadium station for repeated outages on new equipment.
“If this were in Japan … and if that machine was down once, the branch manager of the service company would go to the stadium and apologize in person,” said Jonathan Taub, president of FIELDBOSS, which developed the tracking system.
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