dupont circle
courtesy of dracisk
If you use the South Entrance of the Dupont Circle Metro Station, well, I hope you like walking. You’ll be doing more of it, soon. Starting Wednesday, the South Entrance will be closed for 9 months while WMATA replaces the 185-foot spans that rise 85 feet to street level. The company that makes the particular escalators used in that entrance have been out of business for some time, which has made finding parts of the escalators difficult. Given that the spans are some of WMATA’s least reliable, that’s a combo that means replacement and not repair.
WMATA will be putting standard escalators in place and widening the current entrance space to handle these new, wider escalator bays, and the entrance will be closed until November of this year. Farragut North’s northern entrance is just 0.5mi to the south, and the North Entrance of Dupont Circle will remain open during the work. In the case of emergency, Metro will leave one exit escalator span in place during the work for emergency egress, along with a new spiral staircase. The North Entrance of the station will have additional on-call escalator techs in case of failure.
Does anyone else think this is ridiculous? 9 months of an entire entrance being closed? Granted, the north entrance is only two blocks away, but thankfully for me, this is not my stop. I’d be pretty frustrated if I either worked or lived near this entrance. What a PITA.