Anne Karni in the New York Sun reports that the Clark Street elevator failed 400 times in the last two years. Yeesh. That’s an elevator I know and love to hate. I used to live on Montague and I have relatives and friends who live close by. Here’s an excerpt from her story in the Sun.

A shoeshine booth, a barbershop, and a café where chess players gather give the subway stop at Clark Street in Brooklyn Heights the atmosphere of a small town. But the station’s welcoming façade belies some of the biggest service problems in New York City’s system.

Over the past two years, the three elevators at Clark Street have broken down almost 400 times, averaging a pace of almost one breakdown every other day. Riders have been trapped inside the elevators more than 20 times. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s maintenance crews have been sent out multiple times in single days to repair the same elevator, and temperatures inside the elevators have risen to 100 degrees.

The elevators, the main conveyance for customers to reach the trains in one of the deepest stations in the system, have long been sore spots in the community.

"In Brooklyn Heights, one working elevator out of three is about par," the executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association, Judy Stanton, said. "People are just used to bad service, and I guess people feel that we’re lucky to have even one working at this point." The only alternative to waiting is an 80-foot climb up a steep staircase used only in emergencies — and perhaps by mountaineers and marathoners in training.