Repairs expected to take months
The elevator on the northbound track of the Cold Spring train station will be out of service until the spring, Metro-North announced this week.
Metro-North said that a recent inspection found the floor beams in the elevator were so badly deteriorated that the entire cab needed immediate replacement. A new cab will take about four months to design, review, fabricate and install, it said.
Pete Smith, a Cold Spring resident whose wife uses a cane and takes Metro-North into New York City twice a month, said the elevator has been closed since early December. “She can manage the stairs but it’s slow and difficult,” he said.
The agency directed those needing elevator access to use the Garrison or Beacon stations. The northbound platform is connected by a ramp from Main Street and the southbound platform by a ramp from the parking lot.
Neal Zuckerman, a Garrison resident who represents Putnam County on the MTA Board, said he had not been notified that the elevator would be shut down.
“I am frustrated that the MTA didn’t inform me and elected officials, as far as I know, in the community,” he wrote in an email. “That this is happening in the winter months, when the elevator is a useful alternative to often-slippery stairs, is a further challenge.
“In our Metro-North committee meeting yesterday [Dec. 16], in the elevator status report, there was no mention of any months-long outage at Cold Spring,” he wrote. “If it was, I would have certainly communicated that as widely as possible.”
Thanks to The Current for raising this issue. As your MTA board member for Putnam County, once I heard I spoke with Metro-North’s government affairs team. It turns out that, during a routine inspection of the elevator, the floor was found to be so decrepit that there was a likelihood of a rider falling through. An immediate repair was absolutely called for.
I appreciate the immediate reaction of Metro-North to this clear safety issue. I just wish the communication had been wider to the public.
Immediately after, I informed Cold Spring Mayor Dave Merandy, who I believe has shared the reasons through the village’s channels of communications.
If you see any unsafe conditions across Metro-North, please let me know. And thank you, Metro-North, for identifying and working toward this solution.