Metro doesn’t expect to restore nearly 60 percent of its rail car fleet until at least mid-November, Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld said Thursday.
The agency is working to develop a plan to get its suspended 7000-series rail cars back into service, he said. Once the plan is submitted to the independent Washington Metrorail Safety Commission, the government agency that oversees Metro safety, Wiedefeld said the transit agency will need at least two weeks for tests.
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“We are working as hard as we can to get that legacy fleet back out there, but it takes time,” he said, adding that current service levels would remain through Nov. 15.
The new details were revealed Thursday during Metro’s board meeting. The transit agency has been relying on about 25 percent of its rail cars since Oct. 17, when the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission ordered the agency to pull its 7000-series cars from service. The transit agency has operated a reduced schedule, with waits between trains reaching 40 minutes.
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The 7000 series, Metro’s latest model train set, is more than 60 percent of the agency’s 1,200-car fleet. A defect in which the distance between wheels widens outward on their axles — making them more prone to slipping off the rails — has been found more than 50 times over four years, with most of the failures surfacing this year.
Two Metro cars with known defects continued operating until safety inspectors alerted the agency, officials say
The problem came to light Oct. 12, when a single car on a Blue Line train slipped off the tracks outside the Arlington Cemetery station, prompting the evacuation of 187 passengers. The National Transportation Safety Board launched an investigation that revealed the defects had appeared since at least 2017 and that Metro was aware but didn’t inform the safety commission, a government agency that monitors and oversees Metrorail safety.
The NTSB has said the defect could have led to a catastrophic incident. Investigators described the problem as rare, surfacing after a period of time or miles, and said the defect originated either during construction of the cars or the assembly of the cars’ wheels and axles.
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The defect, first detected during routine Metro inspections, appeared between two and five times a year between 2017 and 2020, before inspections this year turned up 18. The NTSB found at least 21 more incidents during an examination of all 7000-series cars.
Federal investigation into suspended rail cars puts focus on inspections, maintenance
Metro officials said they viewed the problem as a warranty issue in a handful of cars until this year, when the defect appeared more frequently.
The safety commission allowed Metro to propose a plan to return cars to service that don’t have the defect — even without knowing what is causing the issue — that assumes frequent inspections or other detection methods. Metro has been working with safety commission officials on the plan, which the transit agency said it plans to submit soon.
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Metro’s train shortage comes as more downtown and federal offices reopen and new coronavirus infections in the United States have dropped nearly 60 percent since a September spike. Business and civic leaders say a fully functioning Metro system — the nation’s third-largest — is crucial to the D.C.'s region’s economic recovery.
Metro extends lower service levels for another week amid derailment probe
Trains are operating every 15 to 20 minutes on the Red Line and every 30 to 40 minutes on other lines. Silver Line trains are operating between the Wiehle-Reston East and Federal Center SW stations.
This story will be updated.