WMATA rebuilds make some escalators worse

A story in the DC commuter paper Express (PDF, sorry) says that "a $93 million project to rebuild 178 Metro escalators has managed to make many of them worse, documents show. More than a third of the escalators that have undergone the expensive renovations are breaking down more often than they did beforehand. And close to a fifth of the rebuilt escalators have shown only marginal improvement." However, on the bright side, "the equipment is more dependable than it was five years ago."

My personal experience may reflect this. I pass through Silver Spring station on the Red Line every day, where Metro is rebuilding all five of the escalators. Four are done, with one being rebuilt now. After each escalator was rebuilt and put back in service, problems cropped up. Outages were frequent; one new escalator was out for over a week. But the new escalators have since improved. Maybe there is a necessary "working out the bugs" period.

"History suggests escalator problems are a constant." Of course they are; escalators are complex machines that will break from time to time. Sometimes I wonder if the press is too harsh on Metro in this regard. After visiting several shopping malls whose escalators are often out of service, I'm not sure Metro does such a bad job. (And shopping mall operators are stupid: when one escalator is out, they don't even shut the other one down to allow walking. I once shut an escalator off myself for this reason.) Has anyone ever compared how Metro's escalators perform versus escalators in other settings or transit systems?

The problem is that I'm not sure such a comparison would be valid, because Metro's escalators face extraordinary conditions. No shopping mall escalator faces the traffic, hours of operation, water, salt, sand, luggage, dropped items, and temperature conditions that a Metro escalator faces. (This is true even of the Metro escalators that are indoors; think of all the water that commuters bring to an escalator with their wet shoes and umbrellas.) However, a comparison to other transit systems like New York might be helpful, even though New York likely does not have nearly as many escalators as Metro does.

But of course I don't cut Metro too much slack here: there has been a history of mismanagement when it comes to escalator maintenance (and other things, for that matter.) I'll bet the Washington Post will cover that in detail on Sunday, when it will start a series about Metro.

"The lack of staircases means that in stations where there are two escalators per entrance, when one needs repair, the other must be turned off so people can use it to walk up or down." This is a design issue I have often wondered about. At some new stations, such as New York Avenue on the Red Line and Greenbelt on the Green Line, the designers were smart enough to place all escalators next to a staircase. This way, if one escalator is out of service for repair, there is no need to shut down another escalator to allow walking. Yet other new stations (such as Glenmont, which is newer than Greenbelt) placed the escalators so that there are no companion stairs. Why is this?

In a similar vein, look at that photo of Judiciary Square on the front of the Express. See all that space between the two escalators? What is that for--maybe another escalator in the future? Would it be possible to build some stairs in that space?

Look at the article to get some fun escalator trivia. And look for more in this space later, as the Post will be running more stories about Metro in the days ahead.