On WMATA escalators and lighting...

You'd think that Metro could put elevator technicians on double shifts to speed up the rehabilitation of critical units. But the head of Metro's elevator and escalator office says this would be unsafe.

On this past Wednesday, August 9, David Lacosse, Metro's chief vertical movement man, addressed the rail subcommittee of Metro's Riders Advisory Council. Metro is currently rehabilitating many of its escalators, which involves replacing pretty much anything in the escalator that moves. This process typically takes about eighteen weeks. At many stations, three escalators operate side by side, allowing riders to use the other two while the third is being rehabbed. However in other locations, there are only two escalators side by side. This requires one escalator to be halted and used for two-way traffic while the other is being rehabbed. In those situations, Lacosse says, the rehab can be accelerated to twelve weeks rather than eighteen.

I'm not sure how Lacosse can accelerate those rehabs, though, because he says that he won't ask the elevator technicians to work double shifts. First of all, he says, union work rules limit how much the technicians can work. This is apparently for good reason: the work is quite dangerous. Also not an option is having two different crews work on a single escalator: the equipment is quite complex and if two teams worked on a single escalator, miscommunications between the two teams could lead to mishaps. There is also a shortage of elevator technicians, especially with all the construction underway in the Washington region.

When one of those accelerated rehabs is done, it's time to turn the other escalator back on. That escalator will have been used as a stairway for twelve weeks, and by then it will look pretty disgusting with layers of caked-in dirt. Metro actually has a cleaning machine with strong brushes that it uses to clean up these escalators before returning them to service.

How about putting more fixed staircases in the system so there would be alternatives to escalators? Well, Lacosse doesn't know anything about that--it's not his department. You may notice that some newer stations, such as New York Avenue and Greenbelt, put the escalators next to a stairway so that a unit that's out of service for rehab need not lead to shutting down an adjacent escalator for two-way traffic. (Other newer stations, such as Glenmont, are not so designed. Is this an above-ground/underground station split?) I did hear informal chatter at a meeting a few months ago about removing a large part of Metro's escalator fleet and replacing it with stairways. Presumably this would involve ripping out not long street escalators, but would instead remove some of the shorter platform escalators. This could reduce maintenance costs tremendously. I haven't heard anything about this recently though.

Metro contracts out its escalator rehab work. Routine elevator and escalator repairs, on the other hand, are done by in-house staff. Currently Metro has 90 technicians, with 60 more in apprenticeship.

More, greener lighting

After Lacosse's escalator presentation was Akima Cornell, of the Sierra Club's Cool Cities Campaign. She told the committee about how much energy, money, and (ultimately) air pollution Metro could save by switching to compact fluorescent bulbs. These bulbs burn a lot less power and they also last a lot longer (and it wouldn't shock me if the labor to replace a bulb is much more expensive than the electricity to light it!) Though much of the lighting in stations is fluorescent already, there are still quite a few incandescent bulbs left in the system.

Replacing a lot of those incandescents might not be too hard, but there are some lights that present special challenges: the flashing warning lights at the edge of the platform. Each station has hundreds of them, and they can only be changed when trains aren't running. Putting compact fluorescent bulbs in there isn't an option because those bulbs can't flash the way the current incandescent lights do. LEDs can flash, though, and indeed many traffic signals already use LEDs. Metro is testing LED flashing lights at Rosslyn and they're trying to negotiate lower prices so they can be rolled out to the rest of the system: right now they cost over $100 each. Apparently this is an unusual application for LEDs as Metro had to get the Rosslyn bulbs custom made.

In other RAC news: in an earlier post about Metro's budget process, I mentioned the importance of the board's "guidance" on the budget. Well, RAC chairman Dennis Jaffe says the board is considering getting rid of guidance. How would the budget process work without guidance? Nobody seems to know just yet.

Great photo featuring both lighting and escalators from TotallyAverage via Flickr.