Birthday celebrated with repairs, not cake Thirty-five years ago Tuesday, the Metrorail system opened its train doors to its first fare-paying customers.
That day the trains ferried 19,913 riders on the sole line in service, a 4.6-mile stretch of the Red Line between Farragut North and Rhode Island Avenue.
Today the system has 106 miles of track and 23 miles under construction. It carries an average of about 679,000 trips each weekday.
| Metro headquarters on massive rebuilding docket for repairs |
| Metro’s headquarters in downtown D.C. is even older than its train system, and the transit agency says the 37-year-old building is also due to be “brought back into a state of good repair.” |
| Metro budgeted $7.4 million to fix up the building on Fifth Street near the Verizon Center and Judiciary Square. Work is under way, said spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein. |
| The project will help improve the cooling system in the control center, where the computer servers are housed that coordinate buses and trains, she said. |
| It also will cover replacements of some electrical work, a new atrium cover and repairs to the outside of the building, she said. Chipping concrete has exposed rebar in some places, Farbstein said. – Kytja Weir |
But the agency isn’t touting its birthday with any cake, balloons or free rides, nor even celebrating how far it has come.
Instead it is tallying the aches and pains of its creeping age, eyeing a long list of repairs needed to keep it from falling into the “death spiral” that a former general manager had predicted.
“The system has reached a critical juncture,” current General Manager Richard Sarles said. “We need to dedicate ourselves to rebuilding this national treasure.”
The agency is now undertaking the largest capital program since the rail system was built. But the $5 billion it is planning to spend over six years doesn’t cover the new stations under construction on the so-called Silver Line out to Washington Dulles International Airport. It won’t pay for extra service either.
In fact, the rebuilding program is to blame for the delays riders experience at night and the shutdowns they must get around on weekends and holidays.
The money is going toward the unglamorous reconstruction of the tracks, the restoration of crumbling station platforms and the repair of frozen escalators. It is intended to buy replacement rail cars and replacement buses, spruce up the headquarters, and rebuild bus garages.
The Red Line that started the system is getting its own massive face-lift, revisiting the delays that greeted riders the first day that trains ran.
Two days before Metro officially opened, the Red Line opened for a trial day.
The agency had predicted 10,000 riders that first day. But instead the system logged 51,000 trips, Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel said. The influx caused the delays on the Red Line, the first of many to come.
