Metro suffered another escalator mishap Monday morning shortly after a video of an earlier failure went viral and appeared on CNN. This time an escalator at the Dupont Circle station jolted to a halt, causing riders to fall at about 9:20 a.m. Monday, according to one witness on Twitter. TBD.com first reported the incident. Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein told The Washington Examiner that the problem appears to have stemmed from a handrail. The flaw triggered the emergency mechanism, causing the escalator to stop, she said.
She said no one was reported injured in Monday’s incident. A maintenance crew was dispatched to work on the issue, she said.
The Metro system has struggled for years with escalator problems but usually because they were already broken down, not breaking down with riders aboard. Monday’s failing, though, was just the latest case involving riders.
Less than two weeks ago, the stairs of a Foggy Bottom escalator collapsed underneath riders as Metro began a $6 million yearlong overhaul of the station’s escalators. No one appears to have been seriously injured in that incident.
In October, though, an escalator’s brakes failed at L’Enfant Plaza, causing it to speed up and dump riders in a heap at the bottom. At least six people were injured as the system was flooded with riders for the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.”
Fox 5 posted surveillance video of the incident Saturday, which was picked up widely. It shows people running frantically as the pileup of people forms at the bottom of the escalator.
Metro has been trying to fix the problems and its safety image. It brought in outside consultants in the fall who faulted Metro for its poor maintenance practices, saying such neglect led the escalators and elevators to break down. In November, Metro inspected all the brakes on its 588 escalators, and in December it reorganized its escalator division.
Yet the transit agency’s escalator woes have continued. The escalators have been breaking down more often — failing after an average of about eight days of use — and the breakdowns are taking longer to fix, a recent Metro report showed.
The agency also failed to meet its own preventive maintenance schedule, hitting its targets just 40 percent of the time.
