Starting tomorrow, the Dupont Circle Metro station's southern entrance will close down for at least eight months so three escalators can be replaced. more ›

You'll have to forgive some Metro riders for their jumpiness when they read that the escalators at Foggy Bottom were having some trouble this afternoon -- after all, even though the transit agency just unveiled a brand new moving stairway a little more than a week ago, the station's escalators have been the scene of a few incredibly disruptive incidents over the past year or so. But not to fret, Metro riders -- spokesperson Dan Stessel tells DCist that today's disruption was simply a safety precaution. more ›

A wise man once told me that if you lower your expectations enough, you'll rarely be disappointed. It appears that philosophy has found a home at WMATA, where a new report shows that Metrorail trains are now meeting agency goals for on-time performance -- but only because the transit agency lowered its standards. more ›

NBC Washington has obtained, via a FOIA request, video surveillance of a L'Enfant Plaza escalator collapsing during the Rally to Restore Sanity weekend. The video shows the brakes failing and riders flying off the escalator, some getting stepped on and falling on top of each other. Several injured during the incident had to go to the hospital. Watch the video after the jump. more ›

Reports from various media outlets and Twitter this morning indicate that one of the escalators at the entrance to the Foggy Bottom Metro station broke severely at its base. One witness to the incident told Unsuck DC Metro that the "bottom two or three steps of the escalator literally collapsed" and two or three people "fell through...a gaping hole at the bottom of the stairs." Fortunately, we have yet to hear any reports of serious injuries caused by the collapse, but the situation has created quite the bottleneck of people attempting to exit the station. more ›

Sure, WMATA has decided to inspect all 588 Metrorail escalators after two recent incidents where escalators malfunctioned and injured a few people at the L'Enfant Plaza and Gallery Place-Chinatown stations. But based on information revealed today, Metro appears to have known about the brake failures which were the root cause of those accidents for some time. Unsuck DC Metro got its hands on an audit produced by a third-party consulting firm for WMATA and delivered on September 30 -- the report noted "obvious signs of conditions requiring immediate maintenance/service address," including escalator "brake pads worn beyond usable life expectancy and out of adjustment allowing unit to freewheel to stop" and other massive safety oversights. The brake issue was not mentioned in any of WMATA's official communications about the audit, which was discussed during Metro's board meeting on September 14. Metro spokesperson Lisa Farbstein told WTOP today that the report was not released publicly because it had "not been finalized." more ›

Is this the best website in the city? Simple design, topical, hilarious, perfect for afternoon time-killing: if we're being honest, we can only think of a but a few that would really give How To Use An Escalator In DC a run for its money. Go, click, laugh. more ›

This is the one of the very few times I can recall that Metro has actually warned passengers ahead of time about major escalator outages at some of its stations, so it certainly merits its own headline. more ›

AlertDC says that every single escalator at Dupont Circle Metro's Q Street entrance is currently out of service. The station is still open, unlike when it was closed during a power outage in June; all of the escalators were down then too, and WMATA decided that since people were having such a hard time getting into and out of the station, they would temporarily close it until the power came back on. If you can't handle hoofing it up the station's long elevators today, we recommend using the south entrance on the other side of Dupont Circle. UPDATE: The escalators are back in operation. more ›

Twice this week, all the escalators at the Foggy Bottom Metro station have been inoperative, including yesterday during evening rush hour. Flickr user brownpau submitted this video to the DCist Video pool from the debacle on Monday, which resulted lines going on for blocks. Was it more of the same last night, Foggy Bottom travelers? more ›