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?).

It’s my understanding that the disabled and the elderly are advised to take Metro’s elevators and to plot their Metro routes by elevator availability whenever using Metro. So the argument that strikes me as the obvious case against stairs is mitigated. On the other hand, stairs promote health and would save the Metro system money. On the other other hand, it seems that at any given time there are a fixed number of Metro escalators that are (broken) stairs anyway.

Would stairs slow ridership? Would tourists make moving onto and off of station platforms even more difficult if they were responsible for their own locomotion? Would this happen on a large scale? My guess: Like all healthy, cost-saving measures, the change would be both positive and super annoying.