Photo by philliefan99.Slippery Metro floors — a topic which usually tends to pop up more during icy winters and humid summer days — has been back in the news this week, after two riders in their 70s slipped and fell onto the tracks at Gallery Place-Chinatown on Monday. (Fortunately, some other riders stepped in and prevented a bad situation from getting worse, pulling the pair to safety.) And while slipping onto the tracks is a rarity, there’s a good chance that even the most frequent Metro riders have taken a fall (or at least have lost their balance) at least once on the system’s platforms. But Metro has a plan in place to help with your footing: new flooring.
As part of the Red Line Rehab Project, WMATA is removing the older, hexagonal tiles at a few outdoor stations along the line, like Shady Grove. The new tiles have more grip and create more friction under your feet, as they are made from a more concrete-like material — perfect for the system’s outdoor stations, where the platforms take a beating in poor weather. (They also appear similar to, but are easily distinguishable from, the current flooring design.) Earlier this year, Metro spokesperson Ron Holzer told DCist that “the new station floor material will be used for the rehabbed stations on the Red Line late spring or early summer.” Unfortunately, the system doesn’t have the cash to replace the flooring at every station right now — as you can imagine, it’s a fairly costly and labor-intensive project — though they are planning on installing the new surface at more platforms in the future. The new flooring is expected to be fully installed at several stations by next fall.
Those who want to take a test drive of the new surface can do so at Takoma, where a pilot patch of the new material was installed in 2009. Now, if Metro could just work on closing open hatch doors, we’d really be getting somewhere.
