A 16-year-old suffered a seizure on a Metro train midday Friday, which slowed down trains passing through Rosslyn on the Orange and Blue lines for about 17 minutes as emergency responders rushed to help the boy.
Days earlier, a woman was reported as unconscious on the floor of a Red Line train near the Van Ness-UDC stop at 9:20 a.m., the end of the morning rush. A few hours later another “sick customer” slowed down the Green Line.
It feels like a familiar refrain to regular riders of the system, who know that “sick customer” blurted over the intercom can mean delays far down the line.
But such delays account for just 5 percent of the time that riders spend waiting for trains caused by unexpected problems, according to Metro. The incidents happen less than once a day on average. In November, for example, the transit agency had 18 “sick customer” incidents, according to Metro spokesman Dan Stessel.
| Metrorail delays | |
| 50% Rail car problems | |
| • 17% doors malfunctions | |
| • 12% brakes problems | |
| 15% Track problems, including power, signal or system issues | |
| 10% Operations | |
| 15% Customers, including fights, suicide attempts, riders on tracks | |
| • 5% sick customers | |
| 10% Police, smoke other emergencies | |
| SOURCE: Metro, data from Dec. 2010 through Oct. 2011 | |
Add the suicide attempts, fights, vomit cleanups, and riders trespassing on the tracks, and riders are still to blame for only 15 percent of the minutes that trains were unexpectedly delayed from December through October, according to Metro’s latest statistics.
Problems with the rail cars, the track system itself or operations caused three-quarters of the delays which riders spent stuck in trains or waiting on platforms.
The “sick customer” incidents are, by and large, serious medical emergencies, Stessel said. Many riders may feel sick — nauseated from the bumpy ride, hung over from too much partying or generally not well — but be well enough to walk themselves off the train, avoiding any delays.
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The alerts, instead, generally involve cases in which someone is unconscious or unresponsive and needs to be removed from the train by emergency responders, for reasons such as a seizure, a diabetic coma or even heart attack.
Metro measures the delays not by the incident but by how much time it takes to resolve them for each train, Stessel said. So a minor incident that happens during the height of rush hour could have a bigger effect than a more serious case during a slow period when fewer trains run.
“Sick customer” problems are generally short-lived as Metro gets the person off the train. But often it means some delay because the operator has to go back to the rail car to see what has happened. The delays in November ranged from two minutes to 27 minutes, Stessel said.
