Photo by Mike Sandman on Flickr.

Metro is replacing the Bethesda Metro’s three escalators. Why is it happening now, and will the station have to close?

The 2½ year project began earlier this month to replace all three of the station’s entrance escalators. WMATA’s press release said, “For safety reasons, Metro may need to temporarily close Bethesda Station to prevent overcrowding during service disruptions or other events, such as a disabled train, medical emergency, infrastructure problem or power failure. This may happen with little advance notice.”

What does this mean? Will Bethesda station really have to close? What will the impact on riders be? We talked with WMATA spokesperson Dan Stessel about the project.

Why do this now?

Bethesda station is going to get a new, second entrance in tandem with the Purple Line. That construction is scheduled to start in 2016. Can the escalator rehab wait until there is another entrance? Metro already will be closing the Red Line for 14 weekends between Friendship Heights and Grosvenor for that and other repair work.

Stessel says this can’t wait:

For more than a year now, [the escalator division] has permanently assigned a maintenance team, composed of two technicians and one master technician, to Bethesda and Medical Center — just those two stations (something that is unheard of among our peers in the transit industry). That’s in addition to emergency response personnel and supervisors. That level of attention has yielded positive results, but it is not sustainable in the long term.

The escalators are original equipment, installed when the station was built and in service since it opened. As you know, the longer the escalator, the more parts/sensors, the harder to maintain. These units are well past their useful life and need to go. Kicking this can down the road is not a good option.

Also, [General Manager] Sarles personally made a commitment to Bethesda riders three years ago, and we are making good on it.

Stessel also said that the work couldn’t go any faster if workers closed the whole station because they can’t fix more than one escalator at a time:

KONE, our contractor — and one of the global leaders in this industry, would still only be able to work on one unit at a time, because one unit must be maintained for worker access to the shaft and crane activity can only occur on a single unit due to space constraints. Meanwhile, we would continue to expend huge resources to maintain outdated, outmoded escalators. I believe that if you spoke with most Bethesda customers, they would agree that getting this project done sooner is better.

What if an escalator breaks down?

Bethesda has three escalators from the station fare control area to the bus garage area (where you can exit or take other, shorter escalators to Wisconsin Avenue). If one is under repair, that leaves two, one going up and one down.

According to DC Metro Metrics, Bethesda’s three escalators have been down 6.63%, 4.55%, and 4.81% of the time. (And that is with the dedicated repair personnel Stessel talked about above).

Given these numbers, if we assume that each breaks down totally independently of the others, the probability that two or more escalators is broken at the same time would be less than 1%. But when only two escalators are functioning, the average probability that one or both escalators is broken rises to 10.4%.

What happens when one of these escalators breaks down, leaving only one functioning escalator? Stessel says:

We will have [escalator] techs physically at Bethesda every hour the station is open for the entire duration of the project. They’re there to quickly respond to any outage.

In most cases, the escalators can be reset by the techs — or the problem can be quickly resolved. If that’s the case, no closure necessary.

If we have a longer, more complex outage, that may or may not result in a closure depending on a few factors:

  • As long as there is an ascending escalator available and the second, out of service unit is available as a walker [a shut-off escalator you can walk up or down], the station can stay open. Personnel can reverse a working descending unit to ascend if that helps.
  • If either of the two remaining units is barricaded for any reason (not available as a walker), the station will close due to the extremely limited capacity for exit.
  • If both units are out of service (i.e. for a power outage or fire alarm), the station will close.

When else might the station close?

Bethesda could close even if two escalators are still working. That’s because, Stessel said, with only two escalators there is less capacity to get people out of the station:

The station will be closed/bypassed if there is a delay that causes crowding beyond normal rush hour levels. …

We have a team of personnel at Bethesda every hour that the station is open, including MTPD officers and an official, [escalator] techs, a safety officer, a rail supervisor and an [escalator company] rep. These personnel are there to monitor conditions and effect an evacuation if necessary.

The decision to bypass the station is made by the ranking MTPD official based on actual crowd conditions or the potential for crowds. Types of incidents that could prompt bypassing include single tracking events, medical emergencies, arcing insulators, person struck, power outages, and so on. Factors such as peak vs. off-peak are taken into consideration. We won’t needlessly inconvenience riders, but we will always put safety first.

In fact, the day we were emailing back and forth with Stessel, he said the Bethesda station was going to close because of single-tracking and “a reported track problem” like an arcing insulator outside Bethesda. But then the track inspectors found everything to be okay, so the station stayed open.

It sounds like there’s really no good answer here. It’s likely that the station will close some of the time, and even though Metro will provide shuttle bus service from Medical Center when that happens, it would still add a lot of time to a trip. Still, Metro has good reasons for moving forward. It’s just unfortunate that Bethesda riders may have to deal with some significant inconveniences as a result.