Have you ever wondered where your Metro stop ranks in terms of escalator length? Here are the 10 longest escalators in the system.

Graphic by the author.

Each of the escalators shown is actually a bank of 3 escalators (except at Rosslyn, which has 4), so technically this is a list of WMATA’s 31 longest escalators.

Metro has 588 total escalators. The longest in the system, in fact the longest in the Western Hemisphere, are at Wheaton, which have a span of 230’. The Wheaton escalators are so long, they’re twice the length of Cleveland Park’s, which are 10th longest.

Interestingly, 9 of the 10 longest escalators in the system are on the Red Line. Only Rosslyn at number 5 is on a different line.

And while Wheaton’s mammoth escalators seem like an almost endless ride, they’re only slightly longer than one third the length of an 8-car Metro train.

While Wheaton has the longest escalators in the Western Hemisphere, WMATA’s longest are only in 7th place worldwide. The Moscow Metro station at Park Pobedy has the longest in the world, at 413 feet. Stations in St. Petersburg, Kiev, and Prague also have longer escalators than at Wheaton.