In comparison, according to a 2012 Washington Post article, subway systems in Montreal and Moscow took much less time to replace escalators than work being done at the Dupont station at that time.

“Aquin was the supervisor on a project to replace 125 escalators on the subway system in Montreal. The work finished late last year. It took between seven to 12 weeks to remove each escalator and install new units, depending on the size, according to Aquin and his supervisor Susan Coburn. One was almost as long as those at Dupont’s south entrance, he said.”

Officials in Moscow wrote in an e-mail that eight months sounded on the longer side for replacing an escalator. The Moscow subway system is the only one in the world with more escalators than Metro. The Russian system has 643; Metro has 588.

“It normally takes us about three months to put in an escalator of the size you mentioned,” wrote Oksana Ustinova, an interpreter at Moscow’s subway system.

WMATA's rationale for the length of time needed for the replacement is that the current escalators need a lot of repair as they are old and the original manufacturers are no longer in business, meaning getting replacement parts is difficult. They also seem to have a problem over the years hanging on to qualified repair personnel, according to various Washington Post articles (linked at the bottom). I'm sure we've all noticed how often those escalators are off.

While I'm honestly very happy to have these constantly malfunctioning escalators fixed, 45 weeks to do so seems really long. It made me wonder what else could take as long, so I did some googling. Here's some things that compare to the 45 weeks Metro says it will take to replace two escalators: