Now it's running, now it's not: Another hiccup for notorious Southern Cross station escalator
Just when you thought the troublesome escalator at Southern Cross station had been fixed, up pops another peak-hour predicament.
The escalator leading to platforms nine and 10 has been out of action for a month, while station management scrambled to get a temporary fix in place while a part is created from scratch and flown over from Europe.
By Wednesday, no doubt to the great relief of both passengers and station staff, the escalator was back up and running. However, it was to be a brief respite.
But the escalator was again causing frustration by Thursday morning peak hour, this time with a minor handrail issue forcing its temporary closure.
Crowd management was in place, with passengers having to queue up for a crowded lift.
The escalator was back in operation just before 9am, but by 9.30am was stopped again.
The month-long outage had caused peak hour delays for frustrated commuters on the Hurstbridge, Mernda, Belgrave, Lilydale, Alamein and Glen Waverley lines.
The broken escalator was not causing delays to Metro services on Thursday morning.
The debacle has sparked a conversation about how the station can cater for increasing numbers of passengers.
By 2031, the station's operators expect the number of passengers passing through the station to increase by an extra 100,000 a day.
The Andrews government last month knocked back a $300 million proposed upgrade to Southern Cross to help ease platform overcrowding.