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Dupont Circle South Metro Entrance to Reopen Sunday!
From WMATA:
Metro officials to cut ribbon on new Dupont Circle escalators, reopen south entrance this Sunday
On Sunday, Metro officials will cut the ribbon on three new “transit-grade” escalators at Dupont Circle’s south entrance, marking the completion of an 8 ½ month project to improve reliability and safety for customers using the station.
WHERE
Dupont Circle Station south entrance
19th Street NW near Dupont CircleWHEN
Sunday, October 21 at noon
Category: Dupont Circle, Transit
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Monday morning 2 escalators will be broken and the 3rd will be stopped to allow people to walk in.
Fantastic! These type of projects need to happen more often. Yes, it is of great disturbance for a bit, but the end result is far worth it.
I’ll believe it when I see it. Also I have the over/under for the new escalators to break and 10 days.
meant to say “at” 10 days.
This is absurd. A ribbon-cutting for what should be at best a routine infrastructural project. Metrorail has been a transit system since its inauguration in 1976. Why did they wait 36 years to begin installing “transit-grade” escalators?
This reopening doesn’t warrant any fanfare, and they should just have the damn thing running as soon as possible. Sarles and his photo-op can go to hell.
Wow! It looks like someone has a bad attitude.
Why does it take 8.5 months to install escalators? I’m not trying to be flip here, I really want to know. Well, ok…maybe I’m being halfway flip. It just seems like escalators are a relatively small-scale, contained project that could be completed in far less time. But on the other hand, I acknowledge that I know absolutely nothing about escalator mechanics–so if there are indeed technical reasons that the process takes so long, I’d be curious to learn.
Given that it took only 13 months to build the entire Empire State Building, I think this is a fair question.
It is a fair question. And the answer, as they gave it, was that taking apart and removing the three old escalators was an extremely tedious process. It all had to be done while a Metro station operated below, along with the Red Line, which often operates (often it doesn’t). They had to keep one escalator in reserve at all time for an emergency exit staircase. And there was virtually no extra space since three escalators were crammed into a space best used for only two. Originally, they said it would take a year, but, by working nights, they knocked it down to eight months.
…Proving that even when metro completes complicated projects on time, it gets hated on.
Read the second half of p 2 of this article for a description of some of the challenges of the project. Basically, it sounds like a lot of unique measures needed to be taken given the challenges of disassembling the old escalator, the size of the work space, and the obsolescence of the existing equipment. Of course, the rest of the article is devoted to skepticism about the need for the length of the process.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/metro-riders-and-some-experts-wonder-why-dupont-escalator-work-must-take-so-long/2012/04/02/gIQALk30qS_story_1.html