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Metro Turns 40
By Susan Olling
Our little subway system turned forty on 30 March. Not before
some big bumps in the road.
In a recent installment, I mentioned a tunnel fire on Monday, 14 March,
that disrupted commutes through downtown D.C. all day. An
uninsulated third-rail power cable was the culprit. This incident
was similar to a tunnel fire at another station in January 2015.
That fire occurred while a train with passengers was nearby.
Smoke filled the train. One passenger was killed, and many others
were injured. On Tuesday, 15 March, Metro’s general manager
announced that the entire rail system would close the next day for
twenty-nine hours so that all one-hundred miles of track could be
inspected. This, for some reason, was national news. For those of
us who live here, it wasn’t national newsworthy.
Yes, there was going to be some inconvenience. There wasn’t much
notice about the system shutdown. However, Metro did an
outstanding job communicating all this including a press conference for
which local radio stations interrupted programming. People had to
make other arrangements to get to work. Or telework, if they
could. Some federal employees were not happy with the Office of
Personnel Management’s decision not to close the federal
government. Mr. History, who is a federal employee, had no
trouble getting to his job. A commentator on one of our
radio stations had some pithy comments about Metrorail closing down on
a weekday. I used the term rant in an email response to what he
had said. (Note to Mr. CNO Editor, you’re not the only journalist
who’s gotten comments from this writer.) A few days later,
on-air, Mr. Commentator reported that a number of listeners took him to
task for what he’d said. A local newspaper ran an unflattering
editorial describing Metro and its decision to close on Wednesday
rather than Tuesday. Two letters in defense of Metro’s decision
appeared in the next Sunday’s edition. I didn’t write either one,
but I particularly enjoyed the explanation by one reader that
assembling the needed staff to do the track inspection would take time.
Oh yes, one of the 535 elected ones, a Congressman from across the
river, called for firings at Metro. I don’t disagree.
Accountability is something that Metro’s lacked for quite a while.
The result of the inspection revealed more than two dozen damaged power
cables. There are reportedly six-hundred cables within the
system. A post-inspection story included a photograph of one of
the damaged cables. Anyone who was still griping about the
decision to close down Metrorail should have had their eyes opened.
I had my reservations about the new general manager of our little
subway system. After 16 March, my reservations have
lessened. It’s clear that Metro has finally gotten some
long-needed leadership, and its board of directors is willing to
support him. The January 2015 tunnel fire was an incident.
A second so soon after that one? There’s something happening that
needs to be investigated. To do that, you have to look at the
rails. Mr. General Manager figured this out. He
doesn’t appear to be afraid to make a decision to close the rail system
entirely. Who shuts down an entire rail system for something not
related to the weather? And on a weekday?
For anyone paying attention, we know who’s in charge at Metro; and it
appears we’re going to see something new. Earlier leadership of
our little subway system talked about safety. And that’s all it
was: talk. There’s a fairly long list of past incidents: trains
hitting each other (most memorably in 2009, several fatalities in that
one), trains running over Metro employees doing track work, and
tolerating train operators who were running red signals.
It took a long time for the tracks to get into the shape they’re in
now, and it will take time and funding to repair them. Also
patience on the part of riders. I suspect that’s one commodity
that regular riders of Metrorail will need in abundance for the
foreseeable future.
Will what happened on 16 March occur again? We’ll see. In
any event, I don’t see track work, which will resume after the Weed
Festival, ending any time soon.
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