WMATA should be sued (maintenance, dangerous, floor)
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All of these escalator outages pose a major god damn safety threat. If there was a terrorist attack or a fire or anything bad really, a lot of people would die simply because they wouldn't be able to get out of the station quickly enough. Remember the Dupont Circle farce a few weeks ago? The floor of the station where the escalators were was completely packed since two were out of service... and that wasn't even an emergency situation.
WMATA needs to be sued, or maybe have an Iraq pulled on them. Take out every person in charge and put someone new in there, preferably with brains.
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I understand the OP's concern but I think evacuating with escalator or not is a safety risk for people being trampled. Just saying, that as long as they can us the escalator as steps, i see no room for a lawsuit.
Considering that people can evacuate a station faster by walking or running on a moving escalator than by merely standing still on one, what big difference does it make if the escalator doesn't move at all? People with mobility issues who can walk and would slow down faster people by walking slowly on a stopped escalator would still slow down faster people by standing stationary on a moving escalator.
If one is willing to sue WMATA over this bogus excuse, then they'd better sue every high rise that shuts off elevators in the event of fire, because they haven't installed escalators to evacuate people. How do buildings evacuate? Stairs!
EDIT: Ok, I realize that one scenario is going UP, and the other going DOWN, but exiting a Metro station on foot really isn't more arduous than going down 10 or more flights of stairs. If you have fitness issues with the one, you'd have fitness issues with the other. And plenty of the world's subway systems don't have plentiful, or any, escalators.
Actually, the real problem is people walking on the escalators. That's what causes them to break down. The "stand on your right walk on left" custom/rule whatever it is is just darn dangerous. It's so dangerous, in fact, that Japan has banned all walking on escalators:
The issue is that they close off these escalators for months at a time. They're somewhat advanced machines, yes, but they're not space shuttles. They're not just out of service but actually cordoned off, creating a huge bottleneck. Obviously they need to be blocked off while being repaired, but the repairs take ages.
don't forget the debacle at Foggy Bottom as well. The sad thing is that without these fare hikes we probably would have WORSE service. As it is we just get the same sometimes good sometimes awful service.
Actually, the real problem is people walking on the escalators.
LOL, where is your evidence for that?
Actually, the REAL problems are that many of Metro's escalators are 1) huge, and require enormous engines to operate, and 2) very backlogged in terms of needed service and repair. The maintenance backlog at Metro is astounding--it's got nothign to do with people moving on the escalators. I have no idea why that is such a fixation for you.
Actually, the REAL problems are that many of Metro's escalators are 1) huge, and require enormous engines to operate, and 2) very backlogged in terms of needed service and repair. The maintenance backlog at Metro is astounding--it's got nothign to do with people moving on the escalators. I have no idea why that is such a fixation for you.
The article I posted says Japan banned walking on them because it's too dangerous. Japan has a superior subway system--WMATA should imitate what they're doing.
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