Metro passengers were frustrated Thursday when a track fire at Metro Center brought Red Line trains to a standstill during the morning rush hour, and statistics show the system averaged one such incident a week over the past year.
There were 54 track fires in fiscal 2008, officials said, many of them due to older, worn out track bolts catching fire in or near stations.
But that represents a 42 percent drop from fiscal 2007, when 94 fires appeared on the transit system’s tracks – a drastic drop that officials attributed to several new fire-prevention initiatives.
Earlier this year, Metro identified a list of the system’s urgent but unfunded needs, which included $45 million to replace 120,000 old bolts.
As the bolts wear down on sections of the track in and around stations, which see more stress from trains stopping and starting, they are more susceptible to catching fire, Metro rail chief Dave Kubicek said.
Once a fire is spotted, Metro must disable the system’s third rail, cutting power to allow staff to remove to stud bolt and surrounding material.
“It’s not just like flipping a light switch – it takes time,” Kubicek said, which is why there was no service at Metro Center from 7:16 a.m. until 7:35 a.m. Thursday.
While Metro is still searching for the $45 million to begin the stud bolt project, workers are slowly replacing the hardware at the most problematic stations on a regular maintenance cycle, Kubicek said.
Metro has made some gains in alleviating the second most common cause of track fires — trash that falls onto the tracks and is swept into the tunnels by the trains.
Metro installed debris-collector cages on the tracks at that Judiciary Square, Union Station and Gallery Place stations and is in the process of constructing collectors for each of the remaining underground stations.
Metro workers have also begun walking the tracks to collect discarded newspapers and bottles, filling as many as 3,000 large trash bags a month, Kubicek said.
“Basically, what’s happening is that I’m taking good, skilled people and we’re out there picking up trash by hand,” he said.
The transit agency is also looking into buying more vacuum trains to clean the tracks.
Metro currently has one such machine that operates only during the hours the rail system is closed.
“It might take a month to do the whole system,” Kubicek said.
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