Washington, DC Metro Has To Pull Half Of Fleet For Safety Issues

Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has since lived and traveled around the world several times over. Though frequently writing about politics out of a sense of duty and love of country, most of the time he would prefer discussions on history, culture, occasionally nerding on aviation, and his amateur foodie tendencies. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter @four4thefire and his food writing website Yonder and Home. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast.

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13 Responses

  1. Kolohe says:

    I guess the ‘good news’ is that ridership is still down to about 20% of pre-pandemic levels, and ‘rush hour’ is where the difference is most stark.

    https://www.wmata.com/initiatives/ridership-portal/Rail-Data-Portal.cfm

    plus, this week looks to be perfect fall weather (60’s and sunny) for alternatives like biking or walking a bit further.Report

  2. Jaybird says:

    I kinda expected an Atlas Shrugged joke by now.Report

  3. Michael Cain says:

    The series-7000 cars have been somewhat problematic from the beginning: unable to handle tighter curves in a couple of areas, hazardous for blind passengers getting on or off, vibration and noise problems, requiring service at half the specified interval. Now that there’s a really expensive problem, I expect at least several months of “Your car design is inadequate,” countered with “Your tracks and roadbed don’t meet the spec you gave us to design to.”Report

    • Kazzy in reply to Michael Cain says:

      If you had to venture a guess, what do you think actually happened?Report

      • Michael Cain in reply to Kazzy says:

        Guess? Metro spec’ed their requirements at 80% of what they actually needed and Kawasaki left no margin for error. Now we’re seeing structural failures because the limiting components have been subject to excessive force for a few years.Report

        • Kazzy in reply to Michael Cain says:

          Is that normal for both parties?

          I remember Metro having derailment issues back when I lived there circa 2009.Report

          • Pinky in reply to Kazzy says:

            The metro system has been in a death spiral for, by now, decades. Elected officials get more of a benefit from expanding the system than from maintaining it. The system has gotten bigger as the can gets kicked down the road. Essentially bankrupt, they have to raise fares, which lowers the ridership, so the system loses more money. The one group that could absorb the cost was government workers, who were reimbursed for the increasing fares (robbing Peter to pay Paul). But increasing telework and now the virus have reduce that revenue stream as well.Report

          • InMD in reply to Kazzy says:

            What Pinky said. The federal workforce has been quietly going remote since well before the pandemic. They either need to bite the bullet and give it dedicated federal funding since thats still who primarily uses it or fundamentally re-imagine (and down-size) its mission. Instead they keep taking it further out even as the various scandals emerge.Report

            • Brandon in reply to InMD says:

              Of two minds about “gov’t workers going remote:”
              1) More security details!
              2) Fewer people bleeding to death on the other end of zoom calls.Report

          • Michael Cain in reply to Kazzy says:

            Early reports say the problem is wheels spreading on their axle, so being able to “climb” off the track when they go over a switch. This afternoon I’ve been on one of my occasional engineering binges, reading technical papers on how railcar wheelsets are made, the forces involved, etc. Sidenote #1: the wheels are held in place on the axles by simple friction; incredible amounts of friction. Sidenote #2: the internet is much worse as a distraction than being able to bicycle to a large university technical library.

            First guess: No one in the business as long as Kawasaki failed to catch that many wheelsets being out of spec. Metro’s crappy tracks put abnormal stresses on and resulted in wheels spreading on the axles. Initial sanity check: History of derailment problems before the Kawasaki cars went into service.Report

            • Kazzy in reply to Michael Cain says:

              All this jives. Thanks for the explanations.

              When I lived down that way, I didn’t ride Metro much. I lived on one end of the Red Line and worked on the other end so it was much easier/cheaper/faster to just drive across. I think that is why they were trying to build the Purple or Silver Line… whichever it was. Not sure if that ever came to pass.

              I always appreciated how clean the Metro was compared to Boston and NYC plus they were ahead of their time with the “Next Arriving Train” boards. And the Art Deco vibe was cool. But the service itself always felt like a chore and the pricing scheme felt screwy for someone so accustomed to flat rate subway fairs.Report

              • Philip H in reply to Kazzy says:

                Silver line is out Arlington Way and mostly done. Purple Line is well underway construction wise but probably 18 months-ish from initial service.

                As to pricing – you have 4 entities funding Metro with 4 different political realities. You won’t ever get rationality out of that.Report

              • Michael Cain in reply to Kazzy says:

                Please note that all I’ve done here is the same trick I used to get paid for sometimes as a systems guy: become an “instant expert” and make a guess that seems to be consistent with the known facts, within a (usually short) time frame that the real experts wouldn’t touch. In six months, it may turn out to be completely wrong.

                The Vogtle nuclear power reactors are in that category. There’s just no way that I would come up with the actual reason that they are so late and expensive: every single major contractor would screw up the work.Report