The bottom two or three steps of the escalator literally collapsed! They fell through leaving a gaping hole at the bottom of the stairs. Two or three people fell in. I would say it was about a three foot drop into jagged steel from the overturned stairs, not to mention whatever else is underneath the escalator. The people managed to pull themselves out and didnt look seriously injured, but one woman was pretty shaken up.

via Unsuck DC Metro.

The Washington Metro Area Transit Authority is a sad organization. It is endangering the lives of its riders. Transformers malfunction, trains crash into each other, escalators never work, people are attacked by thugs with no law enforcement to be seen and now this. The only thing left for Richard Sarles to do is to physically put a gun to the head of a metro rider and rob them!

I think it is high time that the federal government intervene into WMATA. The people of the DC metro area have lost all confidence in this transit authority. It should be federalized as it is the transit system for the nation’s capital.

I was getting off the escalator at Dupont Circle South this morning when I was handed a flyer by someone from the DC Sierra Club. The flyer altered me to the proposed cuts to the metro system.

• No rush hour 8-car trains
• No Yellow Line between Mount Vernon Square and Fort Totten
• No Yellow Line between King Street and DC late nights and weekends
• Longer waits for trains and buses at all times
• 30-minute waits for trains at night
• Many bus routes eliminated or shortened
• Train stations opening later — 30 minutes on weekdays, an hour on weekends
• Train stations closing earlier on weekends — as early as midnight instead of 3am
• Buses starting later in the morning and ending earlier in the evening
• Many bus routes eliminated at night or on weekends
• Closing some rail station entrances and even some stations entirely evenings and weekends

WMATA is facing a $190 million dollar budget deficit. The metro system of the nation’s capital cannot be allowed to function the way WMATA is saying it will have to function. It should not even be operating as it is now, does anyone remember what happened in the summer near the Takoma Station or the derailment of a train at Farragut North? I believe that the metro system should be federalized! It is ridiculous that it has to depend on so many municipalities for its funding.

The reality is that this is a tough and dangerous job.

Moore was the third Metro employee to die on the job since the June 22 Red Line crash in which a train operator and eight passengers were killed. In addition, a subcontractor was electrocuted at a Metro bus garage.

In Thursday’s accident, Metro said a preliminary investigation indicated that Moore had walked down a staircase in a vent shaft in an underground section of the track between the two stations.

He opened a door that offered access to the area of the track bed where trains operate and was struck, according to a statement Metro released late Monday.

There are people who risk a lot to make our public transportation systems function.