HOLLOWAY, Ohio — The Mid-Lake Transit District has closed the outbound platform stairwell at Holloway East after six passengers and one employee descended from the elevated station and emerged at ground-level entrances elsewhere on the rail line. The platform elevator and opposite stairwell remain open, and trains are operating on schedule.
The affected stairwell has 24 concrete steps between the platform and a landing, followed by a turn and 22 steps to Merrow Avenue. It is enclosed but not climate-controlled. Station plans show no corridor, service door or connection beyond a locked electrical cabinet beneath the landing.
The first report came from home health aide Denise Parra, who left an outbound train shortly after 6 a.m. Friday. Parra said she descended toward Merrow Avenue and stepped onto the sidewalk outside Flint Square, four stations and nearly seven miles east. She recognized the bakery beside the entrance but initially assumed she had boarded the wrong train.
Parra's fare history and train video show that she exited at Holloway East. Cameras inside the stair enclosure record her starting down at 6:14. She passes below the camera near the landing and does not appear at the Merrow Avenue door. A Flint Square camera shows her climbing the final three steps there 11 seconds later, carrying the same lunch bag and wearing no coat despite steady rain at both stations.
Five later riders reported similar trips. Their destinations included Larch Terminal, Vanet Street and the closed Cedar Works stop, where street access has been fenced since a 2024 platform repair. A college student who appeared inside the Cedar Works fence called the transit district and waited 38 minutes for maintenance staff to unlock a gate. None of the riders reported injury, and all declined medical evaluation.
Janitor Hollis Wren entered the stairwell with a radio Sunday afternoon after a passenger's umbrella could not be located. His supervisor heard him count the first 20 steps and then ask why the station had changed color. Wren emerged at Vanet Street holding the umbrella and a plastic grocery receipt dated two days later. The store named on the receipt has no Vanet location, according to its district manager.
The closure adds about three minutes for riders using the opposite stair and longer for passengers who require the elevator, district operations chief Lena Bost said. Staff have been assigned to the elevator during peak periods, and paratransit pickups were moved to the east curb. Two nearby businesses extended delivery windows because the barricades narrow the sidewalk.
Transit police and a structural engineer walked the stairwell in pairs before it was closed. They reached Merrow Avenue each time. A laser survey found the expected rise and footprint, and workers examining the enclosure from below found intact block walls around the landing. The district said those checks establish that the structure is stable, not that the passenger accounts have been explained.
Bost said the agency will compare synchronized camera clocks and replace the access-control recorder before deciding whether to reopen the stairs. The seven affected people did not travel to the same place, and interviews found no shared employer, event or destination. Four said they were thinking about routine errands when they entered. Two were reading their phones, which lost network service for less than a minute.
Wren returned to duty Monday and said the descent felt ordinary except for the handrail becoming warm near the turn. He recalled passing two people climbing toward him, a woman in a red raincoat and a boy carrying a folded newspaper. No one else appears in the Holloway East recording. At Vanet Street, a camera shows the same pair step aside as Wren emerges, then continue down into a stairwell that ends at sidewalk level.
Workers chained the Holloway East doors and placed tamper seals across the frame Monday evening. By Tuesday morning the seals were intact. The digital passenger counter above the doors, which has no sensor inside the closed stairwell, recorded 19 people descending overnight and none returning to the platform.