How to Use an Escalator in DC

Photo courtesy of
‘Escalator Equalizer’
courtesy of ‘Rolenz’

We love to hate escalators here in DC, particularly when they’re broken down or when tourists are blocking your path as you just miss your train.  And since Metro can’t post signs telling people to stand right and walk left (remember why?), this escalator frustration was just something we had to learn to live with and silently stew over.

Enter howtouseanescalatorindc.com. Offering such brilliant tips as “DC escalator = think politics: Left = move forward, Right = obstruct path, Middle = no one likes a centrist make up your damn mind”, this site is the perfect outlet for escalator frustration.  I can’t count how many times I’ve wanted to shout at a tourist, “YOU KNOW ALL OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO GOT ON BEFORE YOU AND WALKED UP QUICKLY? THEY WERE NOT IN AN EXERCISE CLASS. MOVE OUT OF OUR WAY” and now someone else has finally said it for me.

Thank you, howtouseanescalatorindc.com, for finally writing what we’ve all been screaming in our heads for years.

Shannon grew up in the greater DC area/Maryland suburbs, went to Virginia for college and grad school (go Hoos!), and settled in DC in 2006. She’s an urban planner who loves transit (why yes, that is her dressed as a Metro pylon for Halloween), cities, and all things DC. Email her at Shannon (at) WeLoveDC.com!

5 thoughts on “How to Use an Escalator in DC”

  1. Thanks for the post guys. Glad you like my site. If anyone has any snarky suggestions, I’m @joelhousman on Twitter. I’ll add them to the lineup.

  3. “DC escalator = think politics: Left = move forward, Right = obstruct path, Middle = no one likes a centrist make up your damn mind”

    Thanks for the tip! I know now to consider howtouseanescalatorindc.com an enemy for insulting every part of the political spectrum except liberals.

  4. It’s stuff like this that earns our reputation as an uptight over-working city. Is the 30 seconds you save by pushing past everyone on the escalator really that big of a deal? The escalators are stopped or broken half of the time anyway, I’m personally much more inconvenienced by that. I’m just glad I don’t use the metro during the same hours as you type A personalities who are in a big rush to get up or down the escalators.

  5. “Is the 30 seconds you save by pushing past everyone on the escalator really that big of a deal?”

    It is if you miss your train by 30 seconds.

    Tourists riding Metro for fun think DC is a theme park, not a city where people work for a living. They must be disabused of this notion. If WMATA won’t do it, the natives will.