A cracked rail on the Red Line delayed thousands of riders during their morning commutes Thursday, causing such crowding on the system's busiest line that a secondary breakdown occurred.
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The meltdown happened as Metro board members asked agency officials about improving communications with customers during such service meltdowns, seemingly unaware that they had yet another public relations problem on their hands.
The crack was reported by a train operator about 6:30 a.m. on the inbound tracks just before the Tenleytown station, according to Metro. The agency redirected all Red Line trains onto the other track, with trains taking turns through the stretch.
| Metro board adds monthly rail pass to menu of fare hike options |
| Metro's board plans to ask for riders' input on adding a monthly pass as part of this summer's fare increase package. |
| The idea came after a push by transit advocate Michael Perkins, who modeled the proposal off a Seattle pass system. |
| But the options Metro is considering, including two 28-day passes similar to existing seven-day passes, would be limited to paper, Metro officials said. |
| The agency's plastic SmarTrip cards don't have the technical ability to have passes -- or would take extensive reprogramming that may not be worth doing -- said spokesman Dan Stessel. The agency could do something different when it moves to a credit card-based system, but there's no timeline on when that will occur. |
| Having only paper cards could doom the passes, which must be purchased specially, from being fully adopted by riders. Currently pass holders take only about 4 percent of all rail trips. - Kytja Weir |
But about 9 a.m., the problems worsened. The bottleneck became a stopped cork when a train malfunctioned.
Jam-packed crowds inside one train had leaned on the doors, triggered the brakes of the train, Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said. The train was stopped for about 15 minutes on the single track as the operator walked along it to check all the doors.
That in turn caused more delays, pushing what Metro initially estimated to be a 15-minute delay into what some riders reported as 45 minutes or more.
The delays infuriated riders, who already are frequently waylaid by scheduled track work and downed escalators. Now they know fare increases are coming soon, too.
One rider created a petition for Red Line riders to get a free ride in return for Thursday's hassle. "If Arab Spring could bring dictators to their knees -- surely thousands of well-informed folks from all parts of the D.C. Metro area can make Metro listen and treat riders with respect and come up with innovative ways to address these challenges," Jennifer Stark wrote.
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Stessel said the agency did not give refunds, though it has the ability to give them during unusual delays to riders who enter the system then exit from the same station before boarding a train.
The agency opened up both tracks about 12:30 p.m., some six hours later, after replacing about 40 feet of track.
It was not clear what caused the crack, though. "I really could not tell you because we have to do further reviews," Deputy General Manager Dave Kubicek told reporters.
When two rails cracked on the Yellow and Red Lines on Jan. 4, the agency blamed a sharp temperature change during a snap of cold weather.
But Thursday's weather, with temperatures in the 50s, was not extreme.
"We do apologize for the delays, but that's one of the reasons we've got such an aggressive program of track work," Kubicek said. "We're in catch-up mode."
