Out-of-service elevators at Huntington train station inconvenience commuters

When Dennis Doyle contacted us Friday morning, the elevators he relies on at the Huntington Long Island Rail Road Station had been out of service for two weeks.

The station has an elevator on each side of the tracks to provide service to the train platform from the parking garage. The elevators also carry passengers from the platform to the elevated walkway over the tracks, which is especially useful if a train arrives on Track A when a commuter's car is parked on the Track B side.

Without the elevators, "there's an issue with accessing the overpass because I never know which side the train is going to come in on," said Doyle, who has two hip replacements and other health issues. One evening he said that he resorted to hailing a taxi to ferry him and a passenger with a disability to the other side of the tracks.

And when the elevator remained out of service, he called the railroad.

"They said they don't service the elevators, they only service the tracks," Doyle, of East Northport, said. "I called town hall, the public safety office, where a lady told me that they had ordered parts and were waiting for them to come in.

"Then I was connected to another department, where a gentleman said it's not broken -- 'we turned if off because of the cold.' "

Which left Doyle not only in the cold, but in the dark and, on some evenings, finding that he and his car were on different sides of the tracks.

"I told them there's no way of telling when you leave Penn Station which side of the tracks you're going to come in on," he said.

The town reports that the extended bout of cold weather is to blame. "We took both elevators down because of the extreme cold," spokesman A.J. Carter said. "Obviously we haven't had severe cold for this length of time in more than 30 years."

Fluids in the hydraulic mechanism thicken when it's so cold, "making it difficult for the car to move" in response to the call button, Carter said.

The town is researching the use of heating devices to keep the mechanism warm, he said. But those won't arrive quickly: Research, pricing, ordering and installing doesn't happen overnight.

Still, Doyle had good news late Friday.

"You won't believe it," he said upon arrival at the station. "It's working." Carter said a town department head checked on the elevators Friday afternoon and, when one appeared to be operating without a problem, it was returned to service. The second needs a repair that will be done Monday, he said.

And there's better news for the days ahead: Once Saturday morning's low temperature is out of the way, no more single-digit temperatures are in sight.

At least for the next seven days.