Parts of the Blue, Orange, and Silver lines were shut down for eight-and-one-half hours after a train derailed before 6:00 in the morning at the Smithsonian stop near downtown Washington, DC. Although Metro hasn’t yet determined the cause of the derailment, it seems likely that the service interruption is due to poor maintenance, which has caused many other incidents. The accident also illustrates a fundamental problem with rail transit: when one train breaks down, an entire line–or, in this case, three lines–can be shut down.
Metro continued to run trains in the outer reaches of the system, but stations between Federal Center and McPherson Square–in other words, nearly all downtown stations on the Blue/Orange/Silver lines–were closed. The Red and Yellow/Green lines were unaffected, and Metro provided buses for passengers on the other lines needing to reach downtown.
By 2:30 pm, Metro had opened four of the six affected stations and ran trains on one track. Both tracks were in operation by midnight, and Metro hopes to have service completely restored this morning.
Just means we must subsidize them more (sorry, I mean pay them reparations), so they can attempt to compete with the evil car on an equal footing.
I took a nice stroll between Fed Cen SW and LEnfant instead of taking the shuttle busses. More trouble today in a different section on the same line! It is so despairing down there because everything else (besides the trains and tracks) are also deteriorating. Take note Rushern Baker, don’t build that Purple line!
The point where this derailment happened was also the site of the first fatal wreck in the history of the Washington Metrorail system.
Wikipedia: 1982 Washington Metro train derailment
NTSB report: Railroad Accident Report — Derailment of Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Traln No. 410 at Smithsonian Interlocking January 13, 1982. (scanned .pdf, 15 megabytes).
The NTSB determined the cause(s) of the 1982 wreck:
The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the accident was the failure of the Metrorail Operations Control Center (OCC) to stop movement of trains through the Smithsonian Interlocking until it ascertained the nature of and corrected the switch misalignment; the failure of the OCC over a 3-day period to note discrepancy reports concerning a wayside control failure in the Smithsonian Interlocking and to order repairs; the failure of the onscene rail transportation supervisor to check conditions at the original lead end of train No. 410 before initiating the reverse movement of the train; and the failure of the train operator to timely recognize the train had derailed and to apply the brakes in emergency. Contributing to the accident was WMATA management’s failure to put into place an adequate program of initial and recurrent training for OCC and Metrorall operating personnel and its failure to adopt adequate rules and procedures for safe operation of trains in the manual mode.
It kills me that some (many?) people think Metro is a business rather than a government entity. My friend who lives in DC was raging against Metro on FB a few years ago, and I asked her what she expected from government, but she argued that Metro isn’t government, even though it is. After this latest debacle, comments on news articles complain about a business letting the tracks and trains deteriorate.
Are people honestly that clueless?
Great move. This will get every union employees a raise and get Metro even more subsidies.
It is either the Metro workers/managers/lobbyists get the big money, or else the Redskins owners/players will get the big money. Either way, Metro will never do routine maintenance because all the profit is in obviously needed “improvements” and ” expansions”. The delays and even deaths are just collateral damage.