Washington’s once highly-regarded Metrorail system is falling apart, as a series of major incidents over the last three days plainly illustrates. Two separate equipment malfunctions forced Metro to completely close its busy Dupont Circle station during Monday morning’s rush hour as Red Line riders piled up on the station platform, causing dangerous overcrowding. This intolerable breach in service was topped over the weekend by not one, but two shutdowns of the entire Metrorail system over a 12-hour period.

Metro blamed its supposedly “fail-safe” computer system for twice stranding passengers on all five lines for a half hour or more before service was restored. Metro’s other recent equipment problems — cracked and heat-kinked rails, brake parts flying off railcars — pose serious public safety concerns. But the failure of both the Rail Operations Control Center computers and Metro’s multimillion-dollar backup system (which inexplicably uses the same software system) took that existing hazard to a new level.