Metro’s Red Line riders will need to endure three more years before major track work has finished on the system’s busiest line, the transit agency said Thursday.
But that doesn’t mean the delays that riders regularly face on their commutes will end in 2015.
“There will still be some level of shutdowns and some level of single-tracking,” said Rob Troup, the assistant general manager over the agency’s infrastructure.
Plus, work will continue on the station platforms, escalators and elevators. And then delays could continue when trains break down or other mishaps occur.
But by 2015, Metro expects that crews will have finished track work to fix safety problems dating back years, including the replacement of all track circuits and the addition of special rails to prevent derailments.
Sharon Elstein put a finger to her head when told of the timeline as she stood waiting for a train. She considers herself a committed Metro rider after riding it since 1978, but she said the service is the worst she has ever seen. She budgeted an extra 30 minutes to get home Thursday in case the Red Line had problems.
And she said she’s now considering driving to work.
Riders like Elstein should see trains running on schedule more often after three more years of the work, Troup said. The Red Line logged an average of 88.9 percent of its train arriving on time, in the last year of available data, but Troup estimates that should improve by 3 to 4 percentage points.
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Even so, “on time” may not be what it sounds like. Trains are considered on time if they are no more than two minutes later than scheduled during peak service — or up to 50 percent of the wait time during off-peak times. That means if riders are expecting a 15-minute wait between trains on a weekend, Metro considers the train on time if it arrives in 22 minutes.
The Red Line would be the first in the system to be finished. The agency hasn’t given a timeline for the rest of the system.
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Much of the problem is that Metro has a big backlog of maintenance. The agency pointed to the example of rail ties, the wooden cross bars on tracks that support the metal rails. The agency should replace about 12,000 of the 250,000 in the system each year, Troup said, but was replacing about 5,000 a year because of a lack of manpower, funding and adequate equipment. Now the agency has a backlog of 75,000 ties that need to be replaced.
Riders have been asking when the shutdowns and track work will start to improve service, especially as Metro soon will be charging them higher fares. But Thursday’s timeline didn’t inspire much optimism.
“Three years? That’s a long time,” said Peter Escoffery, a regular Red Line rider for the past 10 years. “That’s a crock, really. You’re not getting a good return on what you’re paying. It begs the question of what is going on with Metro’s management.”
Even Metro board member Mary Hynes, who represents Arlington, balked at three years: “It makes me gasp.”
