A Hard Station in Brookland's Life; For a neighborhood whose subway service is central to its welfare, continual problems cause concern

For Charles Warpehoski of Brookland, the worst thing about the "Improvement Zone Ahead" signs is that they never seem to go away. At the Brookland-CUA station near his home, he said, the only thing that changes is the month listed in the middle. That's the month, the sign promises, that escalator service will return to normal.

"They kept moving it back," said Warpehoski, 23. "It started in January, then it went to February, then March. . . ."

Last month, the higher-ups at Metro realized the depths of Warpehoski's woes. A report written by Metro staff members and presented to the agency's board revealed that Brookland's Escalator One, which carries riders up from the station into the neighborhood surrounding The Catholic University of America, was visited by maintenance workers 60 times in a mere 90 days, from March to May.

During each visit, workers toiled on the escalator, one of four at Brookland, for an average of 4 1/2 hours.

The statistics show that, between March and May, Escalator One performed worst among all of Metro's 572 …