Power outage trapped commuters in Huntington Metro garage
A power outage at the Huntington Metro station on Wednesday evening shutoff escalators, elevators and parking gates, which caused long backups for some commuters trying to exit the station’s garages.
The outage happened around 7 p.m. and was caused by a power surge, according to a WMATA spokesman. The outage did not affect trains, but commuters reported on social media that all the escalators were out.
The biggest problem the outage caused was in the parking garages. Witnesses said that it took some vehicles more than 30 minutes to exit the north garage (Huntington Avenue side) after the gates to the garage became stuck.
The WMATA spokesman was unsure how long it took to get the gates opened. Power to the station was restored around 8:30 p.m.
This is just another malady for METRO. I arrive early at the North Parking garage at Huntington and I drove in to find piles of broken auto window glass at about half a dozen spaces in the lower level Huntington Ave parking garage. Obviously cars must had been broken into and as of this morning much of the glass is still there although slowly disappearing. When you have to pay almost $5 to park at Huntington there is absolutely no excuse for patrons to be ignored at the exit gates when the power goes off like this. The yellow line to Huntington was shut down all summer and since it has come back on line – there seem to be an almost daily issue with it. Delays/power/vandalism and I noticed on Tuesday, that the south escalators were not even running at all (and there are three of them). Perhaps what people should do is absolutely nobody show up to ride the Yellow for about a week. Absolutely nobody – that would get METRO’s attention. I know I will not miss it when I retire. It is as reliable as an old Edsel.