Results tagged “escalators”

Unsuck DC Metro looks back in time at a novel proposal ever so briefly considered by WMATA, one that never loses its commonsensical appeal: Screw the broken escalators, let's have stairs! A look at the minutes from the 2006 Customer Service, Operations and Safety Committee meeting finds that Metro could save some $1.2 million in annual operating expenses by replacing escalators with stairs -- you know, turning the escalators off -- at some 14 Metro stations. Stations with three or more escalators were only to see one set of escalators turned into stairs (but why?), while stations with those 12 kilometer-long escalators like Tenleytown would be unaffected (but why not?).

Hey Virginia, are you taking notes?

We've often joked in the past about the poor reputation of Metro's escalators and elevators. Rare is the Metrorail trip that does not include a loudspeaker announcement informing customers of all the latest elevator outages. Station escalators seem so often out of order, we've even suggested giving up and calling them by a more accurate name: stairs. But this morning, via the Examiner, Metro is reporting that its escalators reached a 95.5 percent performance rate in January of this year. That's a significant improvement over the low of 88.3 percent availability in the summer of 2006. Elevator service has similarly improved, reaching 97.1 percent in January.