Escalator Forecast: Heavy Sucking With Intermittent Unsucking

It's a mixed day for Metro's escalators. Metro's list of out of service escalators and elevators sometimes can be more depressing than its list of train breakdowns, but today there are signs of hope and, sadly, more evidence that the sucking is nowhere near ending.
First, the good news.
It would appear that for the first time in a long time, all escalators at Foggy Bottom are working today. (Thx brendenchaney and madb0o)
Second, contributor Tim notices signs of hope from Wheaton, which has the longest set of single-span escalators in the Western Hemisphere, according to Wikipedia.
Wheaton, Tim writes, has been down to one working escalator for over three months, and even the working one is temperamental. One of the other two was undergoing a major repair, and while originally slated to be back in service by March, is supposedly going to be ready to go at the end of this month. That promise is looking good, he writes since almost all of the escalator plates are installed. The other broken escalator, effectively serves as a very long StairMaster.
And now the bad news from contributor "CS":
A small but telling incident: Today, for at least the third consecutive rush hour, one of three escalators on the south side of Metro Center that join the Red and Orange/Blue platforms was closed. Regular riders know, of course, that escalator problems are legion. But this closure took place in Metro’s marquee location, so that day after day, many thousands of riders have run into a human logjam, missing trains, etc. If I were Metro management (or John Catoe himself), I would say: “Of all places, it is simply unacceptable that this kind of interruption take place for the better part of a week.” And I would surely bust hump to get the thing open again. But all that has greeted riders this week are the familiar yellow barriers and no sign of any urgency that repairs are being attempted. (Even a sign acknowledging the problem, and explaining that, say, the parts are on order from Australia would help.) The fact this calculus escapes Metro shows why management ultimately doesn’t get the service culture it purports to embrace. Yes, escalators will naturally break down. But that’s a hardware problem. After that, the issue is management -- a challenge Metro evidently is still not able to meet.

DC is not alone with escalator woes.


Photo: buschap

A European's Impression of Metro

Today on the Red Line, the driver shut the door in my face without allowing ANYONE to get on. It was off putting, but another train came less than a minute later, so no big deal.
What is a big deal is that four out of four ticket machines I tried to use today refused to trade in my fare card so I could add value to my SmarTrip card, saying "transaction canceled - fare card trade not valid," no matter what sequence of steps I tried.
On top of that, it just makes me laugh that the escalators and the elevators in the Metro stations were apparently built to be maintained, not used. Not a single day passes by that I don’t see a couple of escalators shut down or under repair. Coming from the Czech Republic and being in the US for the first time in my life, it shattered many of my beliefs about US technological superiority. I can assure you I've never seen a single escalator in Prague not working.

Good luck with unsucking Metro,

Jaroslav Petrik

Thanks GGW for the mention.

OMG!! Angelina Jolie!! OMG!!! Angelina Jolie!!

According to WTOP, "actress" Angelina Jolie was filming a chase scene at the Archives-Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter station on the Yellow and Green lines.

If you were being chased, would you hop on a Metro?

In this photo courtesy of WMATA via WTOP, Jolie uses one of Metro's handful of working escalators.

Get your weekend off on the right foot by listening to another Metro audiocast!

We Need More Lines

From "DACUBSRULE"

Trains break down and that sucks. Sometimes people leave garbage on the train. And of course, the work to repair escalators never ends. These aren't a big deal to me though. I mean, if too many people get on a train and the driver makes everyone get off, why cant people at the next station get on? Is it broken at that point and it must go in for repairs? Whatever, it doesn't matter.

To me, the biggest problem by far is that there are not enough lines and the lines do not go far enough out. We have 5 lines. That's it. Hardly any of them go much beyond 10 miles from city center. New York has a lot more lines. If you look at a map of Manhattan's subway system, there are lines and stops everywhere. We should be more like that. There also needs to be a "beltway" line that goes around the city so you can go from one place to another without having to go downtown. It might be a good idea to have trains run on different tracks. For example, could we have an orange train start in Vienna, go to Rosslyn, switch to the blue line, go down to Pentagon, cross the river to L'Enfant Plaza, then continue to New Carrolton? OK, the logistics might be weird since trains make have to switch directions but you get the idea. They do this sort of thing on holidays. Also, could we have more trains at night? If you go to, say, Metro Center at 11PM on a Friday, the train is packed. Think maybe they should have more than 1 train/line every 20 minutes? Seriously though, more lines and lines that go farther out, like to the edge of the suburbs, should be the most important priority

Some things are nice and better than other subways. I like how the seats are nicer, the cars have carpet, and in stations there are signs telling you when the next train will come. I also like the stations that have signs like that as soon as you walk down the first set of stairs from the street. At the same time though, if by eliminating carpet on cars, we could raise enough money to build new lines/stations, then we need to do that. Oh, and why cant I feed multiple metro cards into a machine and have it consolidate the money on those cards into a single ticket?