Passenger stabbings and trains that burst into flames notwithstanding, riders are well aware of the hazards posed by Metro escalators. They ate Rusty’s shoe once. People trip down them frequently. They suddenly stop hurdling everyone forward. But now it turns out that at any given second, escalators can turn into a 5-story chute of peril that ends in bloody carnage and twisted limbs.
That’s pretty much what happened last week at the Gallery Place Metro Station:
Metro officials are investigating whether a brake failure caused an escalator at the busy Gallery Place Station to malfunction during the morning rush Wednesday, throwing 10 to 15 people backward when the stopped unit suddenly started going in reverse.
Two people were treated at a hospital for scrapes and bruises, a Metro spokesman said.
I had no idea escalators had a mechanism that lets them suddenly reverse. Why do they do that exactly???
Maybe we’ve got this all wrong. Maybe it wasn’t a simple mechanical failure. This could very well be the beginning of the Rise of the Machines. Crap. Metro escalators are now sentient! And they have rejected us, their human masters, because of decades of poor maintenance! We gave them surface awnings, but that wasn't enough. They hunger for more. They want human blood. They won't stop until they've placed our bodies in pods that harvest our bioelectrical energy and body heat, while downloading our minds into an computer-generated artificial environment. That diabolical environemnt of course would be PG County. Yeah... this is going to get a lot worse.
Actually, Metro officials speculate that there was some kind of brake failure.
Another rider told passengers that he tried to hit the emergency stop button, Luces said. "But it didn't work."Maybe it would be better if Metro escalators went back to never working.
"We don't know why the unit started moving in the opposite direction," Taubenkibel said. If the brake had failed, it is possible the weight of people on the unit caused it to move downward, officials said.Ah I see. You hear that, fat people? Stay off of the escalators for Pete's sake!
Now comes the Singularity. Ye be warned.
ReplyDeleteSounds more like Fairfax County. Next!!
ReplyDeleteI like how "Darrin Stevens" creates an online persona for himself. Now, I don't have to think of him as "X."
ReplyDeleteWhy I Hate D.C. (Greater Metropolitan Area)
ReplyDeleteAm I wearing a cape, when you think of me?
ReplyDeleteI imagine you wearing a dress.
ReplyDeleteAnd a pair of 5 inch Louboutins. Umm! Delicious.
ReplyDeletesooo i read this post, sent it to my friends, because the metro escalator is ALWAYS broken when we go, saying, “when this happens to us we aren’t riding the metro anymore” we went dt for inauguration craziness, and on the way back on Monday night, with a ton of people in ball gowns, the escalator stops while we’re going up, and I just look at my roommate and scream, something about it’s going to go in reverse now, and sure enough, it starts going backwards. I couldn’t even believe that happened. All the tourist thought I was crazy, and didn’t know what to do.
ReplyDeleteEscalators can be set to reverse depending on the feed for traffic flow. For instance, during certain hours of the morning commute a station might expect most people to be going up/out of a certain station but most people using the station might be going down/in in the evening. Obviously, though, this should not be automated and everyone should be off of the escalator before the direction is changed.
ReplyDelete