Metro has delayed plans yet again to lengthen more trains, meaning the flood of humanity each day on Metro’s Orange Line — known unaffectionately to riders as the Orange Crush — will likely continue. The transit agency had planned to increase the share of eight-car trains across the system from 30 percent to 75 percent during rush periods a year and a half ago. The longer trains can carry about 300 more people each.
Now, Metro’s finance staffers say the plan will be pushed back even further by safety reforms called for by the National Transportation Safety Board. So riders may have to continue to wait as packed trains pass them by during the busiest times, even as they shell out 20 cents more under “peak of the peak” surcharges enacted this summer.
No time line is in sight for adding more trains, said spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein.
“The funding has to be in place before we are able to build the needed infrastructure and purchase the rail cars,” she told The Washington Examiner. “Only then can a time frame be developed for increasing the percentage of eight-car trains in service.”
The transit agency is facing about $1 billion in new costs to cover safety upgrades in the wake of the deadly June 2009 Red Line crash that killed nine people and injured dozens more. About $262 million is slated for 14 projects over the next seven years, said Metro Chief Financial Officer Carol Dillon Kissal, while some $800 million more is set aside to replace the Rohr 1000 series cars that have been deemed uncrashworthy.
Those projects have leapfrogged to the front of an $11 billion line of needed improvements, skipping ahead of the costly upgrades required for longer trains.
“Safety first,” Farbstein said.
Running more eight-car trains is not as easy as hooking up two more rail cars to the back of a train.
Longer trains require more electricity to power it. Not only is such power more expensive, according to Metro, but so is the infrastructure needed to carry that larger power load throughout the system. It’s like needing to upgrade a home so the microwave, toaster oven and hair dryer can run at the same time.
The transit agency also would need more rail cars, Farbstein said. Otherwise, it would have to run fewer trains, allowing more riders per train but creating longer waits to catch them.
