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Escalator sabotage costs Brussels metro dear

The Brussels Metro is well-provided for when it comes to escalators. Even the smaller stations have at least four moving staircases. The escalators make life easy for passengers as they navigate their way though our capital city’s public transport network.

However, not everyone appears to appreciate the metro station escalators.

According to a report in Saturday’s edition of the Francophone daily ‘La Capitale’ engineers are called out to deal with an average of 200 cases of escalator sabotage every day. Sabotage is the cause of around 90% of the 220 reports of faulty escalators that are made every day.

The escalators are often brought to a halt by people activating their alarm system as a “joke”.

Cans and other rubbish are also used to deliberately block the escalators.

Repair work to the escalators cost the Brussels public transport company MIVB almost 4.7 million Euro each year. However, some of this is used pay for replacements for some of the oldest escalators.

MIVB has embarked on a programme of gradually replacing the escalators. However, it will be 2020 before all of them have been replaced.
 

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