If you haven’t noticed, WMATA has been struggling to keep trains running on anything that resembles a schedule. Weekend ridership is a battle of attrition; will you give up and leave the train station or can you wait for that train, only to stop and go for another hour.
Until now the impacts, outside of the near daily meltdown somewhere on the system, have been relegated to weekends. However, after an electrical fire outside of the Stadium Armory station, the impacts will begin to be felt during the peak rush hours as well… and it will last for 6 months.
Metro is doing their best to impersonate the child with the finger in the dam. When we think the third rail insulators are fixed we start getting gauge widening. When gauge widening is being addressed we get an electrical failure at a service yard.
What all of this means is fewer trains per hour for both Orange Line and Silver Line trains, reducing from 6 minute headways to 8 minute headways. I know what you are thinking, when was the last time the trains actually came that often? The reduction of 3 fewer trains per hour will mean your commute will take that much longer and be that much more crowded.
All of these issues were supposed to be addressed during a 5 year period under the watch of former GM Richard Sarles after the 2009 Red Line crash. Those maintenance tasks evidently were sloppily done, poorly inspected, and in some cases skipped all together. What we are left with is a system that blew through money that was meant to remediate these problems, with no end in sight of when we might actually stop having these service interruptions.
This would be a good time to remind you that riders have recently joined together to begin a Riders Union to atleast be able to unite and voice our anger in a manner that hopefully politicians will hear.
