District of Columbia

OCT 17, 8:51 PM

Safety Commission Orders WMATA To Pull 60% Of Its Train Fleet, Severely Reducing Service

Jordan Pascale https://twitter.com/jwpascale

Metro service will be severely reduced Monday and it likely will stay that way for days and potentially weeks or months as the Metrorail Safety Commission ordered WMATA to pull the transit agency’s newest trains, the 7000-series. ... The order comes days after a derailment on the Blue Line near Arlington Cemetery. None of the passengers were injured.

With those limitations, Metro will run about 40 trains on Monday, offering “a basic service pattern” with only six-car trains running every 30 minutes on all lines.

“As Metro continues to work closely with the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission and [National Transportation Safety Board] and more information develops, we will update the public about service for the remainder of this week,” Metro said in a brief statement. Metrorail ridership has been growing steadily in recent weeks and is hovering around 200,000 riders on average per weekday. That’s only about a third of pre-pandemic ridership.

The independent safety commission and NTSB investigation found that the fourth axle on the derailed railcar was “out of compliance with the specifications for the wheel and axle assembly.” The safety commission says it found similar defects in other 7000-series trains that were not involved in the October 12 derailment.

Those trains make up 60% of Metro’s fleet. Meanwhile, all but 16 of Metro’s 6000-series trains are also still out of service for issues with couplers. Between the 2000-series and 3000-series trains, Metro technically has enough to run about 58 trains, though several of those cars could be out of service for regular maintenance and other reasons.

{snip}