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Most patrons of Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s Pentagon Metrorail Station will have more-direct access to the adjacent Pentagon Transit Center beginning July 31, when a portion of the new station entrance and its canopy will open for customer use.



The station has two banks of three escalators conveying customers from inside the station to ground level. Since construction of the new entrance facility began in 2001, patrons could access only the north bank with a temporary walkway to the Transit Center. On July 31, access will shift from the north side to the sound end of the site so that construction workers can begin connecting canopies to the north-side escalators.



The new entrance facility is scheduled to open in November; once complete, it will serve as the station’s primary entrance for Pentagon employees, visitors and tourists, and will include exhibits and tour assembly areas.



The Pentagon Transit Center, which opened Dec. 16, was designed long before Sept. 11 as Phase I of a security upgrade surrounding the Pentagon’s bus and rail facilities. The entrance building, and new elevator and canopy at the entrance are part of Phase II.



About 80 percent of the 36,000 daily Blue and Yellow Line riders make a bus connection at the Transit Center, which has about 1,600 arriving and departing buses that use the center’s 24 bus bays.



After the Sept. 11 attacks, bus service had been shifted away from the Pentagon to South Hayes Avenue in Arlington, Va. It was restored in December when the Transit Center opened.