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.