From Steve:
I wanted to share this photo with you. It's a sign at the top of the escalator at the College Park station. It's kind of hard to read, but it says that it should be repaired by November 15.Got another nominee for worst escalator in Metro?
I took the picture Jan. 8.
Other items:
Metro starts three-day safety review (WMATA)
Oct. 11, 2012
February 21, 2012
March 4, 2010
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26 comments:
Metro Center at 12th and G. There's always at least one out, often two.
That's why they don't use years in thier dates... This escalator will be fixed by Nov. 15 of a year of WMATA's choosing. Nov. 15 2017 sounds about right...
They're just too lazy to change the marking on the sign. You'd condemn them if they scratched out the Nov. 15 and put something realistic like "2012."
any of the escalators at the Q St exit from Dupont Circle.
U Street/Cardozo on the 10th street side has been out of order for what seems like months now. They had it fixed for less than a week and it broke again. Is WMATA running short of staff?
Foggy Bottom, it is rare that all three escalators are functioning
All escalators will be fully functional for your use on December 22, 2012 right after the apocalypse holiday.
Metro Center has an escalator out (12th and F exit) that originally said would be back by 1/7/2010. Now there are two notes...one still saying 1/7...another 1/18/2010.
last month, one of the escalators outside the northern entrance to Judiciary Square had a rolling finish date; first it was early December, then Christmas Eve, then New Year's Eve. it's fixed now.
these updating signs are escalators themselves ... get it? right.
A vote for Bethesda station, the escalators up to the bus station. More often than not, the escalators going UP to the busses are out, leaving you with 2 choices: Bataan death march up the escalator, or wait half an hour in line for a place in the sole elevator (which holds less than 10 people).
As for the 15 November date, I'm guessing that's just a misreading of the actual date; WMATA's Elevator/Escalator page (under Rider Tools) on their otherwise utterly convoluted website has the fix date as 1/15/2009 for the College Park escalator
Maybe the metro website should simply detail the escalators still in WORKING condition, instead of giving us pages of pages of non-working escalators.
The escalators just receive superficial repairs so that when they break again, the repairmen can charge WMATA inflated rates for 8 more months of dragged out superficial repairs. One big patronage system, just like everything else in this city.
Brookland/CUA on the Brookland side. Statistically it's the most frequently out of service escalator in the system.
After eight years of using the Metro Center 12th & G exit/entrance, I can count on two hands the total days when both escalators were operational concurrently. I swear WMATA gave up on them years ago.
I am dreading the day when the Union Station ones are changed. I have seen what happens when one goes out and it isn't pretty.
I vote for the escalator that goes to the platform at Court House. They put a barrier around one of them and the other has been stationary for a number of months now.
I have three nominees for this list of suck:
Columbia Heights, 14th Street SB entrance: At least one of these escalators has been out of service since... September, I believe.
Federal Triangle, middle landing to mezzanine: One of these escalators is being modernized, and has been out of service for about as long as the one at C.H. I really don't understand why it's taking so long: these escalators are probably Metro's shortest; 10, maybe 15 feet long, at the most; it's not like at Woodley Park or Friendship Heights, where they're as tall as an office building, and it would thus be understandable as to why they'd take so long. These one should've been completed a month ago, given how small they are. Okay, moving on...
Medical Center, platform: Anon 10:06 summed it up well. Same thing that's going on at Court House is also happening at Medical Center.
This is the same Anon from yesterday at 10:56. I have just received word that Medical Center's escalators have finished their rehab work. Meanwhile, I have 3 more nominees:
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, ANY escalator: Right now, the northern ones to the inbound track and the southern ones to the outbound track are sucking hard right now; the former more than the latter, because that one's been O.O.S. since Thanksgiving, and it's scheduled to be back in service on the 22nd, but seeing that this is Metro we're talking about, it'll probably still be out by Groundhog Day.
Potomac Avenue, street: Same deal as National, only it's only been out since... a couple of weeks before Christmas, I believe. Originally, Metro said that it would be repaired on the 8th, and now they're saying the 31st. At this rate, it'll still be out on Valentine's Day.
Van Dorn Street, platform: When a broken escalator is listed under the category CALLBACK/REPAIR, it usually means it'll be back in service within a few days. When one of the platform escalators at Van Dorn Street was taken out for this reason at about New Year's, it announced the finish date as the 31st. I really don't know what else to say.
Seconded on the court Houuse Metro. There has been one man working on the escalator on platform since September... it was supposed to be ready in October 2009.
Two words: Crystal City.
And the award for worst escalators in the Metro system goes to...
BETHESDA!!!
Yes, folks, you may have heard all about them: First, one was out of service. Then that number was increased to two. Now, all three of those bastards are out of service. I think it's safe to assume which ones I'm talking about. And you know what the worst part about it is? Metro hasn't even announced it as an e-alert or anything. Usually, when something like this happens, Metro will take note of it and post it as an alert. But so far, no word at Bethesda.
Honorable mentions:
Van Dorn Street and R. R. W. National Airport: Metro has updated their completion dates to the end of February. I'll let that speak for itself. Especially in the case of the latter, which will have been out of service for two months as of next week.
Wheaton: Ah, yes. Home of the longest escalators in the Western Hemisphere. And it's a rare sight when all three of these behemoths are working at once.
BETHESDA!!!!
I just moved to Bethesda in mid December. Since then, there have only been a handful of days when I have ridden the escalator down in the morning and back up in the evening. I have given up on wearing my 'work shoes' on metro since I know I will be getting a serious cardio workout at Bethesda. As soon as one is operational, another one (or even the same one) breaks again.
Last week I was relieved to see the 'up' escalator working as I desecended into the station in the morning. However, it was broken again when I returned home at 6pm. Another long, breathless trek up the 163 stairs.
At least some of the issues have worked themselves out. There were several days in early January where, for some reason, people were walking both up AND down on both of the two unblocked escalators. It wasn't like there was only one escalator, there were TWO available escalators (ok, STAIRS) and yet people couldn't figure understand that one should be for people going UP and one should be for people going DOWN. It turned into a real mess in the top 1/2 of the escalators, because that is when people start to get REALLY winded from climbing. They stop to catch their breath, meanwhile blocking everyone behind them. Nobody can get around since people are simultaneously coming down! Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!
I don't know what's wrong with the Bethesda escalators, but whatever it is, it's apparently contagious, because Cleveland Park's middle landing escalators are now suffering from what I will now refer to as "Bethesda Syndrome." Well, at least C.P.'s not as busy as Bethesda is.
I'll vote for all of them. Metro deliberately eliminated the bright side markings on the step edges to warn people away from the edges of the steps, and encourages riders to stand on one side instead of the center of the step. (Standing away from the sides and near the center of the step is recommended by the National Elevator Industry association (NEII), Elevator and Escalator Safety Foundation (EESF) and The American Public Transportation Association (APTA).)
Metro's "safety is a big joke" attitude is also a major cause of escalator failures, as discovered by the Seoul Metropolitan Rapid Transit Corp when they experimented with a 'stand to one side' program. (The program was scrapped as a result of a 5-fold increase in accidents.) The Seoul Metropolitan Rapid Transit Corp found that standing to one side greatly increased breakdowns and escalator failures.
http://www.scn.org/~bk269/escalators.html and
http://www.scn.org/~bk269/escalatorsafetytour.html
This escalator was fixed... yesterday! Apparently, November 15 is Metrospeak for March 2! :)
The Adams Morgan escalator! It has been out of service since I moved to this crazy political town 6 months ago!
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