28 BART escalators out of service Matier & Ross

Paul Baynton wrestled with a childs stroller which he had to carry down to the train because of a busted escalator. BART had a record 28 escalators out of service recently. The agency blames aging components, weather, vandalism and homelessness. There were two escalators out of service at the Powell Street Station Sunday June 3, 2012, one leading from Powell Street to the station, and one leading down to the trains. less Paul Baynton wrestled with a childs stroller which he had to carry down to the train because of a busted escalator. BART had a record 28 escalators out of service recently. The agency blames aging components, ... more Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close 28 BART escalators out of service 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

How's this for hitting the skids - a record 28 BART escalators were out of service this last week.

And "what makes matters worse is no one is working on them," said rider Rodney Anderson.

"I've been here 15 years, and I've never seen this," said Robert Cotton, BART's chief escalator-repair manager.

One escalator at the West Oakland Station has been out for more than seven months.

Another at Civic Center Station in San Francisco has been idle since Jan. 10, and two others at the busy station have been down for a month.

In fact, nearly half the escalators reported out of service last week were in downtown San Francisco - the three at Civic Center, plus four at Powell Street, three at Montgomery Street and a pair at Embarcadero Station.

In all, BART has 179 escalators and 140 elevators systemwide. But even with a staff of 40 technicians, Cotton says, BART is having trouble keeping up.

Cotton blames the breakdowns on everything from aging equipment to the weather to the daily drubbing the escalators take from the public.

The moving staircases at the downtown San Francisco stations take an especially acute beating from homeless people. They often sleep at the bottom of the escalators to stay warm, and urinate, defecate and spill their drinks into the machinery.

Then there are young vandals who carve up the rubber railings, and the assorted screws, coins and other metal objects that find their way into the escalators' teeth, fouling up the works.

BART installed 19 extra-heavy-duty, German-made escalators in San Francisco more than a decade ago at a cost of nearly $10 million, but they haven't held up as expected.

Cotton says BART plans to spend about $200,000 apiece to rehab them, a fraction of what it would cost to replace them.

If it all sounds familiar, it should.

In the past three years, BART has pumped at least $10 million into trying to keep its escalators moving.

The deep end: Despite opposition from just about everyone in the city's political establishment, a new poll finds that a majority of San Francisco voters say they favor a proposed November ballot measure to study the idea of draining Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and restoring the valley in Yosemite National Park to its natural state.

The poll of 602 likely voters conducted in late April by EMC Research found 59 percent of those surveyed favor of the measure, with 35 percent opposed. Six percent were undecided.

The results came as a bit of a shock to the Friends of Hetch Hetchy, the business and political coalition formed to oppose the measure. The group paid for the poll.

"If we didn't think this was a real threat, we'd happily focus on other priorities," said Rufus Jeffris, spokesman for the business-backed Bay Area Council, which worries about trying to "cut through the noise" of a crowded November ballot to convince voters the Hetch Hetchy measure is a bad idea.

Jeffris and other opponents think the early support has to do with the proposal's wording. It calls for the city's Public Utilities Commission to increase water recycling and study "ending the use of Hetch Hetchy Valley as a reservoir so it could be restored as part of the Yosemite National Park."

What the measure doesn't say outright, critics contend, is that it would be the first step in draining the century-old Hetch Hetchy Reservoir - the main source of drinking water for San Francisco, much of the Peninsula and part of the East Bay.

Restore Hetch Hetchy Executive Director Mike Marshall says his group's proposed ballot measure allows for spending as much as $8 million to study "sustainable" water alternatives and is only a "small but important step" toward draining Hetch Hetchy.

"It's the most moderate, reasonable, incremental approach that any environmental organization has taken with an issue this large," Marshall said.

Opponents are likely to attack the measure by asserting it would cost $10 billion to drain the reservoir and restore the valley - because when the poll's respondents heard that, support for the measure plunged to 38 percent.

Scandal:Ramon Cortines, who spent a decade as San Francisco's schools superintendent before going on to lead districts in New York and Los Angeles, is at the center of a messy sex harassment scandal.

The Los Angeles Unified School District said last week that it had settled with an employee who accused Cortines of taking him to his Kern County ranch in July 2010 and making inappropriate sexual advances.

The deal calls for a $200,000 settlement, plus lifetime health benefits for the employee.

Cortines, 79, who retired from the L.A. district last year, has denied the harassment allegation, saying that what happened was spontaneous and consensual "adult behavior."

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