While mass transit in Washington DC is in desperate need of improvement for riders, leaders in the transit authority are focused instead on further service cuts and fare hikes. Better mass transit is only possible if we, the riders, fight for it. It’s up to us - if we come together, we can win the regional DC Metro that we deserve.
While mass transit in Washington DC is in desperate need of improvement for riders, leaders in the transit authority are focused instead on further service cuts and fare hikes. Better mass transit is only possible if we, the riders, fight for it. It’s up to us - if we come together, we can win the regional DC Metro that we deserve.
The DC Subway system was designed in the 1960s built in the 1970s in a huge spurt of construction some of it done in haste to beat the upcoming Reagan transit cuts. What took NYC,Boston and Chicago to build there systems took a span of 30 years so maintance was more spread out. The only other systems that was built in one huge swoop was the Montreal Metro and BART. Having been on that system it also is begining to show its age as well.
“Metro relies extensively on passenger fares and appropriated financing from the Maryland, Virginia, and Washington DC governments, which are represented on Metro’s board of directors. The system does not have a dedicated revenue stream as other city’s mass transit systems do. Critics allege that this has contributed to Metro’s recent history of maintenance and safety problems.[41]”
WMATA pulls 4000-series rail cars due to safety concerns
A 4000-series rail car on WMATA’s Blue Line. Photo – Ben Schumin
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) yesterday afternoon began removing all 4000-series rail cars from the lead position of trains following the discovery of a safety issue with the units’ automatic train control (ATC) system.
The agency determined that the system could experience an “undetectable failure” leading to improper speed commands given to train operators, according to a WMATA press release.
WMATA pulls 4000-series rail cars due to safety concerns
A 4000-series rail car on WMATA’s Blue Line. Photo – Ben Schumin
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) yesterday afternoon began removing all 4000-series rail cars from the lead position of trains following the discovery of a safety issue with the units’ automatic train control (ATC) system.
The agency determined that the system could experience an “undetectable failure” leading to improper speed commands given to train operat
Now we here the WAMATA metro electrical system is out of date and deteoriating. It will not be able to handle the 8 car trains planned once additional equippment is delivered.
Beg to differ C&O, but Ronald Reagan wasn’t on anyone’s political horizon when the DC subway was built, not as far as national office was concerned. Can’t blame this one on the Gipper.
I was in the area in the mid-70’s when it was in operation, and a friend of mine who worked for the BATF said the real reason it was built was to get all of DC’s street crime underground! I’m sure he was joking.
One thing’s for certain, if the politicians had to ride it they’d have taken better care of it. You never hear of the congressional subway breaking down.
What’s scary about the train separation is that the 7000-series are designed to work in four-car sets. This train separated in the middle of a four-car set, which is especially troubling.
The trains are always ABBA, and the B cars are not to be separated.
I don’t like riding in them because they have a very loud low-frequency rumble that hurts my ears.
The Metro was beautiful until the very late 2000s. It was wearing out. The “SafeTrack” program being undertaken today is primarily a tie replacement program with other incidentals being done while the track is out of service, such as cleaning, new rails, third-rail cover boards (seriously, they’re falling off), conduits, drainage, insulators, traction power, etc.
I has to be a malfunction or a breakage. The B cars in the 4-car permanent sets are designed so that they should never be separated while in service as opposed to the older 2-car permanent sets. I think it might be because they don’t have cabs in them but I can’t find a picture to verify my gratuitous assumption.
‘WE’ don’t suck. To date WMATA management has sucked. Now that everything is starting to wear out, we are begining to find out how badly they have sucked and for how long.
Falsified reports are the normal result when Supervisors that recieve the reports ‘Can’t handle the truth’. Suprvisors are also remiss when their views of the property as the travel across their areas of responsibility don’t jibe with the inspection reports they are recieving. These kinds of problems start with Management, not rank and file employees.
The chief concern about the costs is that it’s been rather apparent over the past 15 years that Metro has had plenty of money allocated to it, even if it’s not permanent, and with that money they should have been able to do all the maintenance they required and more.
The accusation is that it’s been mismanaged and, stupidly, used to pay salaries of door openers over $100K and others $150K and up because attrition “forces” overtime on existing employees. That’s a really serious problem and the union encourages it.
The DC Metro is an automated system. The $100K per year train operators merely open and close the doors and their only other duties are to listen for the passenger emergency intercom and to press the emergency brake button (until about 20 years ago, they couldn’t even do that, but a slipperly rail accident changed that policy). Since the 2009 accident they’ve been controlling the trains’ speed, and badly. If you are in the front car you hear the overspeed warning going off almost continuously.
They have only now started re-activating ATC since the accident. There really wasn’t anything wrong with it before–the signal crews were being astonishingly stupid and mixing incompatible wayside systems with trackside systems during an upgrade project which is the proven root cause of the 2009 fatal accident.
