This week’s deadly Metro crash wreaked havoc with rush hour commutes, leaving travelers stuck on buses and trains for hours at a time while dealing with a tangle of contradictory instructions on how best to reach their destinations.
Part of the Red Line remained blocked through Wednesday, two days after two densely packed commuter trains collided, killing nine and injuring at least 70. Commuters were forced to take shuttles around the Takoma station. It wasn’t going well for many.
“It was just chaotic,” said Amanda Nicholas, 23, of Oxon Hill. After taking the Green Line from home to Fort Totten, Nicholas said, she sat and waited on a bus. Then she was ordered off and onto a new bus. At Takoma, she was once again ordered off her bus and had to take a different bus.
Metro employee Joseph Bennett had been near the Silver Spring stop directing traffic since 4 a.m. Wednesday.
“It’s been crazy,” he said.
That’s the clearest message Metro has been able to give its bewildered riders, some critics say.
“The communications weren’t what they could be,” said Matt Johnson, who writes about transportation for the Greater Greater
Washington blog and regularly commutes from his home in Northwest D.C. to Silver Spring. He has been taking the S buses to work since Monday.
“The morning commutes were fine. But my afternoon commute I don’t think was handled very well,” he said. “I certainly think it’s fair to ask them to be prepared for this kind of thing.”
Metro officials have given conflicting answers to the public and travelers, Johnson said. He was waiting for a Red Line train Monday and said he was peeved that Metro announced “mechanical difficulties” outside Fort Totten. Metro television screens, however, were saying that there was a “police situation” at the station.
“Everyone with a cell phone knew,” Johnson said. “I heard one person say, ‘Why did I have to hear this from my aunt in Florida?’ ”
Most commuters — including Johnson — were willing to give Metro a break.
“It was unorganized yesterday,” said Richard Secord, a sales executive with the Hamilton Crown Plaza hotel. “But they were trying.”
Metro employee J.D. Bynum was also trying to direct traffic at Silver Spring on Wednesday afternoon.
“Hopefully this will only last a couple of days,” he said. “But who knows?”
