Metro will have two hours to do maintenance on Inauguration Day before it offers unprecedented service to accommodate record crowds on Jan. 20. Yet the problems the system has faced in the past week with normal crowds on its regular service may not bode well.
Even Metro officials acknowledge that Inauguration Day will tax the aging system.
“Something will happen on the 20th,” Metro General Manager John Catoe told the Metro Riders Advisory Committee last week. “We cannot operate that many trains and not have something happen.”
On a typical weekday the system faces challenges that can waylay riders. On Monday, the train system faced a round of malfunctions that foreshadows what could occur on Inauguration Day when it will face even more pressure under a global spotlight.
Around 3:45 p.m. a train broke down near Silver Spring, so officials had to use another train to push it out of the way. Both trains had to be emptied of people.
That in turn caused a ripple effect of problems. Two fewer trains meant crowded conditions as the usual rush-hour commuters headed home.
But those extra crowds caused too many people to try to squeeze in, getting bags or other objects stuck in the doors. That in turn, caused doors to break on two trains — one at Farragut North and the other at Van Ness-UDC. Metro officials had to empty both of those trains to check out the jammed doors, bringing the total to four trains taken off line during the evening rush.
It wasn’t until 6:22 p.m. that Metro said the Red Line mess was cleared.
Meanwhile, on the Green Line, another train had a brake problem at 5:43 p.m., said Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel. Although that train didn’t have any passengers on it, that train caused delays to subsequent trains that did have passengers.
Just days before, Metro had a cracked rail on the Red Line near the Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan station — again during the evening rush-hour commute.
Yet on Tuesday, the system will be running more trains and more cars than it ever has, with 17 consecutive hours of rush-hour service, plus trains that run until 2 a.m., and as many eight-train cars as possible.
They also anticipate more people than ever. Catoe has said he expects the day to be like Fourth of July, several times over, and that it will break all past ridership records.
Metro officials have said for weeks that they cannot offer additional service on inauguration weekend — despite pressure from D.C. officials and riders to extend service past midnight on Monday to accommodate all the late-running parties. Metro has said it needs to be closed for at least four hours so workers can maintain the system and fix problems such as the cracked rail.
Just last week Catoe had warned board members that it couldn’t push the trains any more, saying, “We could have a collapse of the system.”
But Metro announced this week that it planned to keep trains running until 2 a.m. on Tuesday, giving it two hours less to do maintenance before it reopens at 4 a.m.
Metro officials said Tuesday they are ahead of schedule in their tests of the system’s ability to run extra eight-car trains that day. The agency ran a record 922 rail cars during morning rush-hour service Tuesday, officials said. They also resolved some train operators’ schedules that Metro officials had said limited them from being able to operate the trains for more hours.
“It seems as though they’re comfortable to move forward,” Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein told The Examiner. “We would not be doing it if we thought it was going to be a safety issue.”
Taubenkibel said Metro also is preparing for extra emergency fixes amid the extra load. He said special quick-response maintenance teams will be working 12-hour shifts Sunday through Wednesday. “It doesn’t matter day or night whether they find something,” he said. “It has to be fixed.”
