Huntington Metro escalator woes expected to be corrected by Friday

It’s been slow going for riders exiting the platform on the North Kings Highway side of the station.

Commuters who use the North Kings Highway entrance to access the platform at the Huntington Metro have a couple more days of “single escalating” misery.

The only two-rider wide escalator from the mezzanine to the platform on the Kings Highway side has been broken since at least May 11, causing large lines for riders exiting afternoon and evening rush-hour trains.

Metro has classified the work on the escalator as a “major repair,” and expect work to be finished by May 20, according to the WMATA website.

“The work being done included drive components, motor, gearbox, axles, and the chains that connect the moving parts which is what designated this as a major repair,” Metro spokesman Jeremy Franklin said in an email.

The escalator setup entering and exiting the platform on the North Kings Highway side is somewhat unusual, especially for a station as large as Huntington. It features two single-rider width escalators and one two-rider width escalator that sits in the middle of them.

Because of the lack of two-rider wide escalators, repairs on any one of the escalators can cause headaches for commuters, especially in the evening rush hour. The loss of the only full-size escalator means riders must exit in a single-file line that creates a large bottleneck of riders waiting to go up (as seen in the photo above).

Franklin says that the middle escalator is due for complete overhaul sometime in the next five years. In the meantime, commuters can take some solace in the fact that the escalator is actually one of the more reliable in the WMATA system, according to dcmetrometrics.com.