In September, “Science of the City” began exploring some of the barriers facing people with limited mobility. Utility poles and hydrants in the middle of sidewalks are one kind of barrier. Additionally, the elevators for the pedestrian bridge at the Hyattsville Crossing Metro station and the Hyattsville Municipal Building have been out of service for months. Since utility poles and hydrants are a problem literally set in concrete, the elevators would seem a quicker fix. This article examines some of the most likely reasons they hadn’t been successfully repaired by the time our November edition went to press — and why no specific date has been set for their return to service.
The Hyattsville Crossing Metro station (formally known as the Prince George’s Plaza Metro station) opened in 1993. “Elevators/escalators should be modernized every 20–25 years and replaced after 40–50 years,” notes a Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) website. “The time frame for elevator rehabilitation is approximately 8–12 weeks.”
It’s reasonable that after about 25 years, the Hyattsville Crossing Metro elevators needed a major overhaul. But why wasn’t the work scheduled while that station and others on the Green Line were closed for three months between July and September 2023?
Of course, the elevator shutdown might not be due to routine preventive maintenance or modernization. On its website, WMATA lists nine other reasons an elevator might be out of service, ranging from a power outage to a water intrusion. Anticipating these problems, the agency should have had the parts and skilled labor to get the Hyattsville elevators running again, no matter what the problem is.
One reason it hasn’t may be that WMATA operates nearly 1,000 escalators and elevators combined — more than any other transit system in North America. Therefore, the elevators on the Hyattsville Crossing pedestrian bridge might not be a high priority because they are actually outside the station itself to help pedestrians cross over East-West Highway to the Mall at Prince George’s. An elevator or escalator outage at a station deep underground, such as Dupont Circle, would be a much bigger problem for many more people. In fact, WMATA’s plan for modernizing its elevators doesn’t mention anything about Hyattsville Crossing. And its automated notification service, which still uses the old Prince George’s Plaza name, incorrectly reports that all elevators are in operation, while the elevators on the bridge are still unusable. WMATA does offer what the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 might consider a reasonable accommodation by providing a shuttle service for people who can’t negotiate the four flights of stairs.
In September 2024, Franco Faraudo, the editor of Propmodo, a newsletter for the commercial real estate market, wrote a story describing numerous incidents where lengthy elevator outages left seniors or those with disabilities stranded for weeks or longer. He noted, “Journalists frequently frame these stories as exposés on negligent landlords, suggesting that they prioritize profits over the well-being of their tenants.” However, he argues that “the root cause of many of these delays comes down to logistics, not malice.”
According to Faraudo, a scarcity of elevator parts is the main culprit behind repair delays; manufacturers only stockpile parts for specific elevator models for approximately 15 years after their production. However, there are other problems (read on) and, theoretically, a large customer like WMATA could require manufacturers to stock parts for as long as necessary as a condition for winning its business.
This scarcity might explain WMATA’s delay in repairing the equipment at Hyattsville Crossing, but why is the new elevator at the Hyattsville Municipal Building still broken? A Sept. 25 email from Public Works Deputy Director Hal Metzler noted, “The City is in the process of completing our elevator modernization project which began in July 2025. The project was anticipated to take approximately 8 weeks to complete. During the work it was discovered that several electrical, plumbing, and fire alarm system upgrades were required to ensure compliance with current State and County Codes. The City’s vendor is completing this work now. Once complete the elevator will be scheduled for its state inspection and be placed back into service.”
By referring to state and county building codes, as well as to a state inspection, Metzler highlights a nationwide issue for the approximately 12% of the U.S. population who report serious difficulty walking or using stairs: To meet widely varying state and county regulations, many U.S. elevators are essentially custom-built, which makes them exponentially more expensive to install and harder to repair.
In a November 2024 The New York Times editorial, Stephen Jacob Smith, executive director of the Center for Building in North America, notes that most of the world, except the U.S. and Canada, has agreed on the European elevator standards, which are as safe as ours and “have been harmonized and refined over generations.” As a result, he says, “a basic four-stop elevator costs about $158,000 in New York City, compared with about $36,000 in Switzerland.”
Smith also cites labor issues that drive up elevator prices in the U.S. These include union work rules that prevent elevators from being efficiently preassembled in factories, and the fact that many highly skilled immigrants, such as elevator mechanics, cannot obtain H-1B visas because they are typically reserved for professions requiring college degrees.
According to Smith, the U.S. (where Elisha Graves Otis invented the first safe passenger elevator in 1852) has only about a million elevators, approximately the same as Spain, which has one-seventh of our population and only 6% of our GDP. In Europe, moderately priced three-story apartments typically have elevators, while American developers are still building four- and five-story “luxury” walk-ups. Closer to home, it seems that the same factors that keep elevators out of service in many public facilities also keep them out of reach in many residences.
Paul Ruffins is a citizen scientist and a professor of curiosity.