The key to the subway is plenty useful aboveground, too.
After revealing that scammers are selling fare-beaters a $27 key that opens subway emergency exits, the Daily News found the key also controls elevators at thousands of city buildings.
The FDNY confirmed the “firemen’s service” key – used in emergencies – can call all elevators to the lowest floor and hold them there.
Thousands of firefighters have the keys, which the FDNY has been using for many years, FDNY spokesman Frank Gribbon said.
They work in “tens of thousands of buildings” – including all commercial high-rises, he said.
The News got a key from a Brooklyn man who said he paid a transit worker $27 for a copy, which he used to avoid paying the $2.25 train fare.
A second man busted by cops recently for having one of the keys told the Daily News he bought his copy from a transit worker for about $50.
NYC Transit President Thomas Prendergast said the agency may have to replace the locks on the system’s 1,412 gates, which would likely cost more than $1 million, he said.
The agency will talk with the NYPD and MTA police before making such a move, he said.
“If from a security standpoint, and in the interest of protecting the system, its employees and the customers, we have to make that level of expenditure, we will do it,” Prendergast said.
Fare-beating costs NYC Transit an estimated $27 million a year.
About 50 people have been arrested since January 2009 for unauthorized possession of the keys.
When NYC Transit installed emergency exit gates in the subways in 2006 and 2007, FDNY officials requested they open with the “firemen’s service” key.
City Councilman Peter Vallone (D-Queens), chairman of the Public Safety Committee, said he was even more concerned knowing the key also can be used to control elevators.
“That’s not a key I want in unauthorized hands,” he said. “We know terrorists are planning attacks on our subways and buildings, and we don’t need to have keys that could help them in the wrong hands.”
Gribbon downplayed security concerns.
Using a firemen’s service key in a commercial high-rise triggers an alarm, Gribbon said.
When all elevators are held in the lobby, firefighters can use the key to maneuver individual elevators, but it requires some know-how and training, he said.
