This occurred at more than one metro station that day. I saw it at Pentagon City and Gallery Place as well. What kind of decision does it take to flip the switch and make the escalator an up escalator and make people walk down on their own? I am just very confused by the lack of leadership in these stations. Do they have to wait for central command to give them the go ahead on such decisions. It is no wonder people are getting fed up with WMATA. I can't wait to see how people react to the new New York Style trains with less seating and more standing.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Everything Going Down, Nothing Going Up
What is with the metro escalators and elevator lately? The other day I was in the metro and they made what seemed like a 7 minute announcement on all the metro stations with broken escalators and elevators. The list must have grown dramatically this past week. I noticed when I got to Dupont Circle that the up escalator was busted, but the down escalator was working. As I hiked up, nearly out of breath, I stopped and asked about four elderly people if I could help them by carrying their bags. Half way up, I just got mad at Metro. It seemed so stupid that they would run the down escalator and make people walk up the very steep escalator at Dupont Circle.
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3 comments:
Didn't Metro get some flack for this years ago? If I remember correctly, there was one summer a few years back when Metro had a spate of broken down escalators. People were forced to walk up them, and some of those people -- mostly older -- collapsed. After that Metro announced that if one escalator in a set was not operating, there would be at least one running up.
It's hard enough to walk up the steep steps of an escalator when it's moving. Be glad you didn't have to walk up the escalator at Wheaton. I had to once and I hope I never have to again.
chronic escalator failure is one of the more glaring symptoms of wmata's poor business acumen. it did a piss poor job overseeing the very expensive contractors who were hired to rehab a whole slew of escalators some years back and was left with shoddy rehab work.
wmata spent $93 million to rebuild 178 escalators, and more than a third performed more poorly than before the rehab.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/04/AR2005060401424.html
At Brookland Station, there's only one escalator that leads to the station on the bus stop side, and it normally goes up. It's out of service until this month (originally until November 2007). They'll probably push it another two months. Going up the steps there sucks.
There's a set of up/down escalators inside the station, but half the time they're no good either.
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