The judges have less trouble getting upstairs because they use a bank of elevators reserved for court personnel. The public is not allowed on those, and may not use the stairs because of security concerns. Among them, there are no cameras in the stairwells, and the narrow stairwells are impractical for small children or people pushing strollers. So they must wait.  In a city full of aging towers, many people view elevator breakdowns as a common annoyance of life. But the scale of the waiting at Bronx Family Court, which often extends to an hour or more, is beyond what most New Yorkers face. And the potential loss is not simply that of time wasted, but of the quality of justice that is dispensed. Consider the case of a client of Ms. Gutfriend’s who was scheduled for a hearing in mid-November to determine whether she could get her daughter back from foster care, where the child had been for 10 months.  The hearing was set for 10 a.m., Ms. Gutfriend recalled, but it was a day when only two of the four elevators in the building were working. The lines to get on the elevator and up to the hearing rooms stretched back two city blocks. Her client phoned upstairs to let her know she was stuck in the line, but was not able to get upstairs in time.  The judge agreed to call the hearing again an hour later, but the client was still in line. So the judge, who had something like 70 other cases to try that day, rescheduled the no-shows for the next available date. For this mother, the next chance to plead her case and get her child back was in January.  State court officials say none of the other family courts in the city have so many elevator problems. New York City, which is responsible for operating the Bronx courthouse, on Sheridan Avenue at 161st Street, four blocks east of Yankee Stadium, says it is working diligently to correct the problem.  In October 2006, the city began a four-year modernization project in the building for the 13 elevators in the Bronx Family and Criminal Courts building, including the 4 available for Family Court. So far, only one Family Court elevator has been replaced. The city says another will be done early next year.  Meanwhile, the city often keeps two elevators out of service for repairs. And because three of the elevators are old, at least once a week, according to many who work in the building, a third elevator is broken as well. Which means that there is routinely only one elevator to serve the roughly 3,000 people a day who come to the Family Court. Occasionally, all four are out.  Even when two elevators are working, which is most of the time, the line of people coming to hearings about custody of their children or foster care snakes out the door and up the block. The court handles a wide variety of cases, including child neglect and domestic abuse.  Mark Daly, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services, which is responsible for maintenance of the 1970s building, said the elevator project was not behind schedule, but was taking a long time because it was complicated. In an interview two weeks ago, he said that the elevator cars and their motors were being replaced, and that new elevator entrances were being created on some floors.  Since July, he added, a two-person repair crew has visited the building every morning at 6; this has reduced the number of times an elevator goes out of service from 40 times a month to 28 in October. Since early November, he said, the repair crew has been on site all the time.  Still, for all the city’s efforts, delays and breakdowns and their consequences remain common. On Nov. 28, for example, the court administration sent out an e-mail message warning the staff in the Bronx courthouse that elevator No. 4 would be out of service for at least several days.  “We are currently operating only two cars, No. 1 and No. 2,” the message said. “The lobby will once again experience long delays entering the building.”  Court personnel say the city’s time frame on the elevators is driving them to distraction.  “We are absolutely confident that when the work is completed the problems will be totally eliminated,” said David Bookstaver, communications director for the Unified Court System of the State of New York. “Would we like to see the work done faster? Absolutely.”  The sentiment was shared on a recent one-and-a-half elevator Tuesday morning by scores of people standing in line waiting to get inside Family Court.  Although the morning was frigid and rainy, most people stood stoically, some without umbrellas, two and three abreast, trying to comfort children confined to strollers and occasionally commiserating with a neighbor about the wait.  Bernard Wilkerson, a construction flagger for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said his custody and child support case against his wife had been dismissed three times because each time he was delayed in line and missed a hearing. Each time he had to petition again to restart the case.  Now he carries the court clerk’s number with him, so he can phone in when he is downstairs. Even with the steady rain beating down on his coat, he said this morning wasn’t that bad.  He was standing only 20 yards from the entrance of the building. Even with the long line inside, he would probably be upstairs in about an hour, certainly less than two. The thought cheered him.  “Sometimes I arrive here and I am standing outside Law and Government High School,” he said, referring to the Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice several hundred yards away.  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: At Bronx Family Court, Justice Is Often Delayed by Broken Elevators. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Sometimes people wait for hours to get onto a working elevator and up to court, only to find their hearings have been rescheduled because they did not show up on time.