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Escalator won't be moving momentarily. Or ever.
toothpastefordinner.com
On any average day, I pass through three, sometimes four, Metro stations. Most times, I run at about 50 percent escalator function. Lately, we're up to 75 percent. (This helps tremendously because I, along with several of my fellow commuters, am lazy and want to delay the death march to our respective cubicles as long as possible.)
A quick scan at Metro's Web site shows as of this afternoon, 31 stations have some kind of escalator malfunction (other than people who haven't mastered "walk left, stand right" and making dead stops at the top or bottom). That's 36 percent of your total stations. Not bad, right? Not good, either. Especially if you're at Gallery Place-Chinatown or L'Enfant Plaza.
In the nearly 10 months I've lived in metro D.C., I've never experienced this phenomenon of escalators working at every Metro station I use in a day. What's worse is nobody seems to have a viable explanation for the malfunctions. I realize hundreds of thousands of people use these escalators every single day, but seriously? More than a third are on the blink?
Maybe it's that evil Metro wind doing the damage. If we can find a way to tie the two of those today, I'll come up with some kind of genius prize package.
What about your station? Report back to us! Tell us where you're trudging and where you're gliding. Let's see how accurate the "projected in-service dates" really are.
4 comments:
In all of my metro years, I don't think I've ever had a commute where all of the escalators are working at both the station I get on at and the one I get off at. That would be insane!
A couple of years ago, I remember seeing a story in the Washington City Paper about metro escalators. First, it noted that ONCE, yes once, in the past year (as of the writing of the article), every single escalator in the metro system was working. For about an hour. On one day. There must be a guinness record for that.
According to that article, one of the main reasons the escalators are perpetually broken is that the idiots who designed metro in the 60s built some of the longest escalators in the world (in fact, I think that metro actually IS in the guinness book of world records for having the longest escalator in the world). Apparently, there is a lot more stress on them when they are running continuously over the course of several hundred feet as opposed to being broken up like normal escalators. I'm sure thats a question for an engineer.
I heard a big part of the problem was that so many of the escalators are exposed to the elements because they are partially outside. Capitol South for instance has about half of the escalators completely out in the open without even a cover over the top. This a) really makes me mad when it is rainy/snowy b)makes the escalators break down... so its annoying
Metro's stand on the side of the step is also a major cause of escalator failures, in that people standing on one side greatly increases breakdowns and escalator failures. The simple expedients of painting 2 inch boundary markings at the edges of the steps and increasing operating speed would substantially reduce equipment breakdowns and greatly enhance passenger safety.
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