Photo by Kevin H.

UPDATE: Well, that sure was quick — Ben Giles, who reported out the Examiner story cited in this post, tweeted this morning that the mezzanine/platform escalator on the K Street side of the Farragut North station has reopened. Huzzah!

Our tipline receives a lot of emails about Metro escalators — or perhaps, more accurately, Metro stairs — but one station that seems to pop up more than any other is Farragut North. One of the oldest stations in the Metrorail system, an escalator between the mezzanine and the platform at Farragut North has been out of service for months, an annoyance for the large number of people who battle the cattle call that inevitably develops during the morning and afternoon rush hours on the K Street side of the station.

According to the Examiner, though, the escalator at Farragut North is expected to reopen this month — if, of course, it isn’t delayed for a third time:

The repairs were supposed to be done in March. That was delayed until April. It’s now expected to reopen in May.

“They just need to fix it quicker,” said Alex Kaplan, who’s been commuting to the station since February.

It’s been irritating and inconvenient to wait in the long lines that build up each morning as riders exit the trains and cram onto the one open escalator leading toward K Street, Kaplan said. It’s quicker to take the escalator toward L Street and double back around to avoid the crowd, he said.

In Farragut North’s case, the reason for the delay has been a tricky component that’s needed “more attention than the contractor anticipated.” (Mass Electric Construction Co. has a $175.5 million contract to perform several rehabilitation projects, including work on the Farragut North escalators.)

Of course, this isn’t the only escalator repair job that’s been extended — far from it. As of this posting, 105 of the systems 588 escalators, 17.9 percent, are currently under repair, and massive projects at Foggy Bottom and Dupont Circle will keep that number up through the next year. A report released in February concluded that Metro only meets its maintenance goals on escalator repairs 40 percent of the time.