Metro will immediately begin phasing in some of the nearly 750 rail cars it pulled from service two months ago after a regulatory agency on Tuesday conditionally approved their return.
The Washington Metrorail Safety Commission allowed Metro to reinstate its suspended 7000-series rail car line, paving the way for the transit agency to return about 60 percent of its cars and gradually end a two-month train shortage that has frustrated commuters.
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The safety commission raised no technical objections to Metro’s restoration plan, which commits to weekly wheel inspections. Metro said it will slowly phase in 336 cars, wait 90 days to assess their performance, then look to incorporate the rest of the series in consultation with the safety commission.
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The plan’s approval brought a sigh of relief to commuters across the Washington region who have encountered lengthy waits and sometimes packed trains during the coronavirus pandemic. Increased train frequencies also will allow Metro to shift more focus on luring back riders amid the workforce’s gradual return to office buildings in the new year.
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The transit agency on Tuesday wasted no time putting the familiar, all-silver cars back into service. The initial batch of 7000-series cars — previously known for being more reliable than Metro’s earlier models — will more than double the number of trains in service, adding 42 cars to an assortment that Metro has relied on during its worst crisis in six years. It included cars scheduled for retirement in coming years and others that had been pulled from storage or released after repairs.
“From now until after the first of the year, customers may see some 7000-series rail cars transition safely back to service,” Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld said in a statement. “This is part of the process that will enable Metro to announce a more definitive service plan after the first of the year. Until that time, the transition of the 7000-series rail cars through the end of the year will allow us to improve reliability.”
Metro lays out early plan for reincorporating suspended series of trains
The safety commission, an independent agency created by Congress to oversee Metro safety, suspended the cars Oct. 17 after the discovery of a rare and mysterious defect that had been proliferating in wheels and axles on the model.
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The defect causes wheels on fixed axles to widen, making the cars prone to slipping off tracks. The problem came to light during a National Transportation Safety Board investigation into an Oct. 12 derailment of a Blue Line train that forced 187 passengers to evacuate. That investigation is ongoing.
The safety commission said it will monitor Metro to make sure it follows the detailed plan that transit officials developed over the past two months and that it turned in over the weekend. Besides checking car wheels every seven days, overall car inspections have been moved up from 90-day intervals to every 60 days, safety commission spokesman Max Smith said.
Wheelset inspections of Metro railcars require precision and time, Metro says
As the 7000-series cars are phased back in, riders should start to notice train wait times decreasing. Wiedefeld told Metro board members last week that he projected train arrivals to increase initially to every eight minutes on the Red Line — up from 12 minutes now — and 15 minutes on other lines now serviced every 20 to 30 minutes.
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“I want to emphasize that the 7Ks’ reintegration will be gradual,” he said during a Thursday board meeting. “It will not happen all at once. We are planning incremental service improvements as the 7Ks are phased in.”
Among reasons for the slow transition: The simple logistics of pulling cars from storage, forming eight-car train sets and dispersing them over a 91-station system that spans nearly 120 miles — as well as the amount of staff and time needed for training and to conduct the weekly inspections.
The wheelset inspections involve measuring the width, or gauge, between two wheels on an axle, which are precisely spaced to fit Metro’s tracks. Wheels on 7000-series cars are pressed to the axles with 65 to 95 tons of force, which should ensure they don’t shift beyond one-sixteenth of an inch, Metro officials said.
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The wheelsets on a car on the derailed train had moved two inches, according to the NTSB, which investigators say they haven’t seen in the past.
Transit officials have estimated that it would take a team of two technicians and a quality-control inspector six hours to conduct measurements for 16 cars. With each car having four axles, Metro will be required to perform nearly 3,000 gauge inspections when the entire 7000-series fleet is back in service.
Metro’s inspection process was developed by running two empty, out-of-service 7000-series trains on the system’s tracks in November, carrying weighted boxes to simulate passengers.
The origin of the defect, while undetermined, began in 2017. It popped up twice on the Kawasaki Rail Car-built series during Metro’s then-routine 90-day inspections. Inspections in subsequent years uncovered similarly small numbers of the defects, which caused transit officials to think the problem was isolated. But this year, Metro inspections found 18 cases of the issue before the Blue Line train derailment.
Emergency inspections by Metro and the NTSB found about 20 more cases after the derailment, which prompted the safety commission to order Metro to pull the series from service.