Yankee Stadium’s New Subway Elevators Keep Breaking Down

The MTA spent roughly two years replacing the elevators at the 161st Street-Yankee Stadium station, the busiest subway stop in The Bronx. Months after they came back, several of them spent baseball season out of service.

According to an analysis by The City Reporter of MTA elevator-availability data, the five new lifts were working 99% of the time in April, when they began returning to action after a project that started in November 2024. By August, the latest month with public numbers, that figure had slid to 56%. The systemwide average is 95%. The MTA’s own records show 37 elevator outages at the station between April and August, 31 of them unscheduled. The station served more than 6.1 million riders on the B, D and 4 lines last year.

The longest-running problem is Elevator 135, which connects the mezzanine to the northbound B and D platform. The MTA projects it will stay down into “Winter 2027,” blaming what it listed as “Con Edison Power Issues.” On Thursday, the agency’s website changed the stated reason to “final contract items.” The replacement job was originally supposed to wrap up last December.

Elevator 131, which links the street to the mezzanine, saw its 24-hour availability drop from 99% in May to 37% in June. It had 12 outages from April through June 26, ten of them unscheduled, then sat out of service until late September.

James Splendore, assistant director for public affairs at MTA Construction & Development, told The City Reporter that low voltage was behind many of the failures. As summer heat strained the grid, he said, the power reaching the elevators was insufficient, and an investigation with Con Ed pointed to problems with both the utility’s infrastructure and the station’s own electrical system. For Elevator 135, he said additional infrastructure has to be installed on the MTA’s side, and a work plan should be ready within the next week. Con Ed spokesperson Ariel Taub said crews upgraded and tested the electric service feeding the elevator last summer and that the utility is “confident the voltage levels are adequate on our end.”

The MTA told the outlet that the two elevators that returned in late September have run with minimal disruptions and that outages have been resolved quickly.

Riders say the outages land hardest on people who can least absorb them. John Ortiz, 64, who uses a walker, told The City Reporter he takes the station every day and the lifts are “always messed up.” Elba Perez, 45, said she climbs to street level to catch a bus to Kingsbridge rather than wrestle her 2-year-old’s stroller and food-pantry groceries up and down stairs. Israel Ortiz, who uses a cane, said he was glad when the street-level elevator was fixed, only to see it go down again.

Advocates were blunt. Joe Rappaport of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled said the MTA “failed at Yankee Stadium during the baseball season.” Jessica Murray of Rise and Resist’s Elevator Action Group said new machines “should not be having outages like that.”