Metro has opened a new staircase at the Foggy Bottom station, putting one of the final touches on a 16-month project to overhaul the station’s sole entrance. The transit agency replaced all three escalators, added the staircase and put up a canopy over to protect the new hardware from the elements. The project was the agency’s first replacement of any escalator in more than a decade, and a test case for an ambitious plan to replace dozens more of the agency’s 588 units over the next six years.
The agency still has “some punch-list items to complete,” Metro spokeswoman Caroline Lukas said Wednesday, but the Tuesday afternoon opening was welcome news for Foggy Bottom commuters who endured bad escalator service, then months of construction-related delays to make it better.
| Fixing Foggy Bottom |
| July 2009: Metro says it will replace the escalators at Foggy Bottom, tacking the project onto its Red Line rehabilitation plan. |
| January 2011: The work begins after at least two months of delays. |
| July 2011: The first of the three new escalators opens. |
| November 2011: The final of the three new escalators is finished. |
| May 2012: The canopy is finished, and the final staircase opened Tuesday. |
The project began in January 2011. The escalators were replaced in November, giving riders some relief, but the whole thing took 16 months of navigating around construction barricades. Metro now says the original timeline was 17 months and it will finish earlier than planned.
Still, that may not be inspiring for others awaiting escalator projects at the Dupont Circle or Bethesda stations. Metro is replacing them at one Dupont exit and plans to start replacing the Bethesda ones in 2014.
The Dupont project, which started in February, is more complicated in some ways. The agency is not taking off the existing canopy there, and the escalators are far longer — the sixth-longest in the system — creating a construction challenge. But unlike the Foggy Bottom exit, which had to stay open during the entire project, the Dupont exit is closed amid the work. Metro has said that project is expected to finish by November.
“The Dupont Circle project is within a few days of schedule with plenty of opportunity to make up the time as the project advances,” Lukas said.
She added: “These are complicated construction projects. Projects of this nature sometimes encounter unforeseen factors that affect the timeline. That’s not unusual, and it certainly should not overshadow the fact that the work is important to customers and will benefit them for decades to come.”
