November 1, 2007
Transit on Thursday: Red Line Delays Edition
Commenter Nate asked if we would look into what's been happening on the Red line lately, which he describes as having been suffering from "morning and/or afternoon delays every day for nearly two weeks now." Indeed, we've heard others grumbling about the Red line of late, which is usually one of Metro's speediest rush hour options.
WMATA explains that the current Red line delays are due to ongoing work needed to replace pieces of flawed track. Track workers are installing new sections of rail at several locations overnight and into the weekend, but until the repairs are complete, trains are operating at a slower speed for safety.
The delays are annoying to be sure, but probably a lot less annoying than a Red line derailment. Hopefully the most of these problems will be cleared up by next week.
After the jump, an extra hour of Metro service this weekend, and your usual weekend track work notifications.
Photo by parikha49
Fall Back, Get an Extra Hour of Metro:
Thanks at least in part to Big Candy, we got an extra week at the tail end of Daylight Saving Time this year for the first time, which means we'll all need to remember to set our clocks back an hour at 2 a.m. on Sunday.
Not only will your Saturday night plans get an extra hour of potential fun, you'll also get an extra hour of Metro service. WMATA sent out an announcement reassuring customers that it will operate on a normal Saturday schedule, providing rail service from 7 a.m. until 3 a.m. this Saturday night into Sunday morning, despite the time change.
Weekend Track Work Delays:
Red Line:
The aforementioned track work means Red line passengers traveling between the Fort Totten and Takoma Metrorail stations should add up to 20 minutes of travel time this weekend. Inbound and outbound trains between these locations will share one track from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday, November 3, and Sunday, November 4. Every other Red Line train traveling towards the Glenmont station will terminate at New York Ave-Florida Ave-Gallaudet U station and return to the Shady Grove station.
Orange Line:
Passengers traveling between the Vienna/Fairfax-GMU and West Falls Church-VT/UVA stations on the Orange Line can expect 30 minute delays, as inbound and outbound trains will share one track from 10 p.m., Friday, November 2, to closing (midnight), Sunday, November 4. Every other Orange Line train will terminate at the West Falls Church-VT/UVA station and return to the New Carrollton station.
Green Line:
Expect 15 minute delays between the Georgia Avenue-Petworth and U St/African Amer Civil War Memorial/Cardozo stations due to continued Verizon Wireless maintenance work. Inbound and outbound trains will share one track from 11 p.m. to closing (3 a.m.) Friday, November 2 and Saturday, November 3.
Trains will also share a single track between the Anacostia and Navy Yard stations because of tile work at the Navy Yard station from 10 p.m. Friday, November 2, through system closing on Sunday, November 4.
Expect extra Green line delays on Saturday as inbound and outbound trains operating between the Greenbelt and College Park stations will share one track while new trains are tested from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, November 3.
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And this is why you build transit systems with at least three tracks on each line.
Oh well. Politicians do something short-sighted, film at all.
A couple of times with in the last few weeks I've had to go home early, around noon, the Red line has been terminating every other train at New York Avenue. Plus, the usual 30 min trip took 1 hour. It's frustrating becuase you don't expect these types of delays mid week.
"It's frustrating becuase you don't expect these types of delays mid week."
Those delays are almost always posted on the WMATA website.
They were running regular weekend service this past Sunday during the Marine Corp Marathon. I guess they figured that the 30,000+ runners and all their friends, family and supporters wouldn't be using Metro. Our first train of the morning on the Orange Line at Ballston was followed 20 minutes (yes, 20 minutes) later by the next train. As we later used the Smithsonian station it would take 10 - 12 minutes between trains. We decided from that point on that walking on surface streets was just as fast.
Not running more frequent, i.e. a rush hour schedule or more, trains was a poor decision by Metro. I know that it made for a poor showing to all the folks visiting from out of town. I lost count how many times I said "I can't believe they aren't running more frequent trains".
How about the fact that until this morning they were randomly operating half as many orange line trains in Virginia during my morning commute?
One train every 8 minutes instead of one every 3. Was like this for a week and a half until my sleep addled brain finally registered what was going on and I started getting out of the house earlier. Then this morning, back to one every 3 minutes. So random.
Are we allowed to resent Verizon Wireless customers (who talk loudly and annoyingly on the Metro all of the time with complete disregard for others in their car) even more now because Verizon Wireless maintenance will be delaying our travel this weekend on the Green Line?
Oh, just wait until the FFA pretty soon approves cellphones in airplanes!
Sorry - FAA!
You don't need three tracks, but you do need redundancy at key points. Or three tracks. Or parallel lines. I think much of the post-war thinking in engineering was that computers and automation would create efficiency that didn't require the types of redundancies that were used in prior eras. Perhaps it was the glow from having found success in WWII -- now things are better! our technology is second to none! we will always win!
I don't know what promises were made by the engineers in Washington. But in SF, Bechtel told everyone that BART would run trains every 15 seconds through automation. And that there would be no service interruptions. The BART trains even have bullet noses so they look like something out of Tomorrowland.
Of course none of this happened. It was what we know call vaporware. Promises made by marketing departments at technology companies that exceed capabilities.
Now for BART, the fact that trains only come every 15 minutes, has actually helped create redundancies, as there have been a steady increase of crossover points to allow trains to pass each other.
This doesn't work for Metro because our trains come so closely behind each other.
We need a massive infusion of money to build more redundancies into the Metro system. The question is: who's going to pay for this? Increased fees and tolls and gas taxes would be the natural way if we were one jurisdiction. Unfortunately we aren't.
On Tuesday and today, my commute was affected by the Red Line issues. Both times there were track and signal problems at Judiciary Square which caused back-ups. Waiting on the train Tuesday wasn't bad, but today I was on the train waiting for almost 50 minutes. Of course my job wasn't too pleased...
Going home Tuesday night was aggravating as well. I was at Farragut North, and because a train was stuck at Chinatown everything was a mess. A Glenmont-bound train let off at FN, just to go out of service and turn around to Shady Grove. What was supposed to be a three-minute wait for a train towards Glenmont ended up being a 20-minute one and a free-for-all as the mob at the platform shoved itself on.
I am praying I don't have problems getting home tonight.
Nope, you need three tracks - with a fixed rail system, all points are key points (a failure on any point on a line will cause problems along the whole line). Redundancy is absolutely necessary so that in case one portion of any one track is out of service for any reason, the entire line in that direction can be shifted around it, rather than requiring single-tracking.
And to be fair, most of the technology that Metro employs for handling train motion works incredibly well. In fact, it's the fact that single-tracking requires switching over to full human operation - and the necessary tightening of safety protocols during those times - that makes single-tracking so damned slow, far more than the actual bottleneck point in and of itself.
Re: Marine Corp Marathon it is up to the race organizer to pay for the extra service needed to cover the extra crowds, not WMATA.
The metro ran early on this past Sunday, I took it to work at 6:00am.