Metro’s Blue Line riders were indeed feeling blue last year as they experienced the rail system’s worst service.
The Blue Line posted the poorest performance from July through November, and the second-worst service in December, according to Metro’s first report that evaluates performance by line.
Only 85 to 89 percent of Blue Line trains arrived within two minutes of their scheduled times during the second half of last year, far less than Metro’s goal of 95 percent.
“One of the challenges that we have is the Blue and the Orange lines intersect at Stadium Armory and at Rosslyn,” Metro Deputy General Manager Gerald Francis said. “It goes anywhere from a six-minute service to a two- or three-minute service.”
With trains passing frequently through those two-track stations, small disruptions can snowball, Francis said. Red Line travelers faced the easiest commute, with on-time service reaching at least 90 percent every month but August, when fires and power outages slowed service systemwide. Orange Line riders saw the second-best commute, followed by Yellow Line riders and Green Line riders, who saw on-time service dip below 90 percent for five of six months.
Overall, on-time service throughout the 106-mile system jumped to 91 percent in December — a 2 percent increase from the month before.
Francis attributed the spike to an effort by the agency’s controllers to manage service disruptions, and to the maintenance team’s push to clean up debris to prevent track fires.
Metro officials said Monday that they are returning recycling bins to some station platforms to encourage riders to discard their papers.
The agency also has begun gathering more comprehensive service data and evaluating the performance of types of railcars.
