Metro riders who have long bemoaned the system’s Foggy Bottom escalators should be able to ride — rather than climb — the moving staircases by next year. The transit agency said it plans to start work Monday to swap out the three existing escalators at the Metrorail station’s sole entrance and squeeze in a new staircase.
The agency also will add a canopy over the entrance, which is a key step that will protect escalators from the elements and guard against future breakdowns.
But with the gains come months of additional pain, the transit agency acknowledges. Workers will shut down one escalator at a time, and have one unit going up and another unit going down. The work is expected to take a year, Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel estimated.
“While we regret the inconvenience to customers, after one year customers will benefit from three brand new escalators they can rely on,” Metro interim General Manager Richard Sarles said.
The Foggy Bottom station, on the Orange and Blue lines, has become a symbol of Metro’s widespread escalator woes. Metro has called them among the “least reliable” of the 588 in its system.
In the fall, an independent review from Vertical Transportation Excellence faulted Metro for its poor maintenance practices on elevators and escalators, leading them to break down throughout the system. In October, at least six riders were injured when brakes malfunctioned on an escalator at L’Enfant Plaza and caused the moving staircase to speed up, dumping riders in a heap. Then, in December, as The Washington Examiner first reported, the agency reorganized the department and brought in a new leader.
Foggy Bottom’s escalators have been among the worst because the station has just one entrance, making the escalators a bottleneck for riders entering and leaving the stations. The agency has had to repair them regularly, grappling with equipment made by manufacturers that went out of business long ago.
In July 2009, the agency said it would replace the escalators, tacking the project onto its Red Line rehabilitation plan. At the time, it had said replacing the Foggy Bottom escalators, adding stairs and a canopy would cost $8 million. On Wednesday, Taubenkibel said the current cost is now $6 million, explaining that the earlier figure was an estimate before contracts were bid out.
