Commuters at Grand Central are going nowhere fast.
Five escalators at the terminal are out of service, forcing some Metro-North Railroad riders to go through a cardio workout just to leave the station.
Three of the broken escalators are in the terminal’s northern end, including one that carries commuters up from deep lower-level tracks. Now passengers must climb 78 stairs to exit or wait for a small elevator.
That escalator — which has been out sporadically over the last few years, including for two months in 2010 — broke in January and is being rebuilt.
It is supposed to reopen by June, Metro-North says. The repair will cost $150,000.
Another northern-end escalator suffered a motor fire a week ago, and yet another has been out since January
Two escalators in the station’s main concourse that lead to the Transit Museum are also broken.
“It’s a serious inconvenience to our customers,” said Marjorie Anders, a Metro-North spokeswoman. “We are fixing it as fast and as well as we can.”
Dogged by problems maintaining the Grand Central escalators, Metro-North ousted the company doing the repairs late last year and piggybacked onto a repair contract in place with the Long Island Rail Road.
Anders said that when the escalators were installed in the 1990s, they were not built sturdy enough for the busy station. They will all be replaced with heavy-duty models beginning next year.