Work is underway to replace the escalators at the Vienna Metro station.
Started on Monday, June 3, the project will replace each of the escalators to the train platform one at a time with new escalators that are “more durable and reliable,” the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority announced.
“While one escalator is being replaced, the remaining two escalators will be operational with one escalator going up and one escalator going down,” WMATA said. “Occasionally, the escalator adjacent to the one being replaced may be turned off and used as a two-way staircase.”
Construction is expected to last until May 2025.
An escalator replacement project is underway at Vienna Station. Stay alert for changes to your walking path at the station. Thank you for your patience while we work to improve #YourMetro. Learn more: https://t.co/PQq5kl9QT4 #wmata pic.twitter.com/l4plpwgPdW
— Metro Forward (@wmata) June 7, 2024
The Vienna Metro station (9550 Saintsbury Drive) is the latest focus of WMATA’s multi-year effort to upgrade the nearly 1,000 escalators in its system. Metro has more escalators than any other transit agency in North America, according to the project website.
Here’s more from Metro on its system-wide escalator replacement project:
In 2021, we kicked off a comprehensive project that will replace 130 escalators across 32 stations by 2028. This builds on our first ever escalator replacement project, which ran from 2011 to 2019 and delivered 145 brand new escalators. As a result of the 2011-2019 project we cut the average escalator age in half, from 27 years at the start of the project to 11.3 years by the end.
Since the current escalator replacement project began in 2021, we’ve replaced over two dozen units with brand new, modern escalators.
According to Metro data, the Vienna station is averaging 3,837 daily rail riders this year, including 44 people a day who don’t tap their fare card at the gate, as of May 31. The average ridership has climbed since a low of just over 1,300 daily riders in 2021, but it remains well below pre-pandemic levels.
The station averaged 8,646 riders a day in 2019, which was already a drop from the over 12,500 daily riders who used the station in 2013 before the Silver Line’s first phase opened.
The Vienna station is the most-used of Fairfax County’s Metro stations, though the Huntington and Franconia stations both also average over 3,000 daily riders.
