WASHINGTON – D.C. Metro is in such need of repair that the transit system could shut down an entire rail line for as long as six month to do needed maintenance, Metro board Chairman Jack Evans said Wednesday.
At a minimum, Evans said, Metro will have to shut segments of lines for extended periods because there isn’t enough time to do the necessary work using only nights and weekends.
Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld confirmed that he was considering such lengthy closures but hasn’t made a decision yet. He said he expected to do so within a month to six weeks.
Evans and Wiedefeld spoke at a high-level conference of regional leaders called to mark the 40th anniversary of Metro’s opening by discussing what steps are necessary to restore it to its original “world-class” quality.
Their comments appeared designed to warn riders and others who depend on Metro that additional, serious service disruptions were on the way, following the surprise, day-long shutdown of the entire system on March 16 for emergency track safety inspections.
“The system right now, in order to do the maintenance that needs to be done, cannot be done on three hours a night and on weekends. It just can’t,” said Evans, who also is a D.C. Council member, D-Ward 2.
“So in order to do repairs that are necessary, it may come to the point where we have to close the entire Blue Line for six months. People will go crazy. But there are going to be hard decisions that have to be made in order to get this fixed,” Evans said.
Although he twice singled out the Blue Line as a candidate for closure, Evans said any of Metro’s six lines could be shuttered.
“That’s up to Paul [Wiedefeld]. He’s the operations guy. I’m just the board member,” Evans said.
Wiedefeld, asked whether such drastic action was likely, said, “I’m keeping all my options open.”
He added: “There are some bigger issues here in terms of power and track, and car maintenance, particularly power and track. . . . In the last few years, we’ve been trying to do this [maintenance] in a sort of piecemeal way, and basically we’ve alienated everyone.”
Evans also said repeatedly that the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, as well as the federal government, need to contribute more money to support the system or see it deteriorate further.
He said the D.C., Maryland and Virginia should create a dedicated funding source, such as a regional sales tax, to provide an additional $1 billion a year to Metro for capital investment such as maintenance. The federal government should kick in $300 million a year for operations, he said.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Robert McCartney
