Metro will not extend its hours later into the night as the District requested. On Thursday morning, the Metro board voted 7-1 to keep the current hours, which allows for longer overnight maintenance time.

Corbett Price, a D.C. board member, was the lone “no” vote. He said that District residents have been patient and deserve a return to late night hours.

D.C. had threatened to use a jurisdictional veto to force Metro to return to a midnight closing time on weeknights and 3 a.m. closure on weekends. But board chairman Jack Evans, the other D.C. member, backed down.

“My goal is to get back to [late hours], but it’s the board’s and general manager’s view that we need to fix the backlog of work we inherited,” Evans said after the meeting.

The vote happened so quickly and quietly that some in the room didn’t even realize it had taken place.

General Manager Paul Wiedefeld welcomed the vote, and said he too wants to extend hours, but safety comes first. He thinks getting back to midnight will be easy, but was wary of 3 a.m. on weekends.

Now Metro will look to patch the late night hours another way.

Metro is still in the process of negotiating some sort of deal to get discounts or vouchers with rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft. Metro officials say that is a suitable stopgap until late night service can return.

Some riders have advocated a “night owl” bus system that mirrors the routes of the train system, but that idea was never publicly debated by the board.

Maintenance Vs. Extended Hours

Metro says the extra overnight hours have allowed more work to get done, and service has improved because of it.

Unscheduled track disruptions are down 50 percent and track fires are down 20 percent since the extended maintenance hours began, according to Metro’s data. The system also had record reliability this January when 90 percent of trains were on time.

But there’s more work to be done, Metro says. Four of the six preventive maintenance programs are not even halfway completed.

Metro officials don’t want to see a backslide in maintenance because of extended operating hours.

But, the transit agency says, the schedule will return to later service on July 1, 2020, unless the board wants to overturn that change.

Wiedefeld will give safety and maintenance updates to the board in December.

D.C. Led Charge On Extending Service

District leadership, including Mayor Muriel Bowser, rallied until minutes before the vote for later hours. Bowser said that Metro needs to do a better job of showing its work and using its time efficiently.

ATU Local 689, the transit agency’s largest union, said Metro should be able to balance maintenance and late night hours.

“Wiedefeld has taken long-term maintenance work and packed it into a short-term schedule not necessary to keep the system safe,” the union said in a press release this week. “If leadership adjusts the maintenance schedule of the rail system, Metro can address current and future matters when it is appropriate, instead of all at once.”

Many Advocated For Keeping Current Hours

Nearly every other jurisdiction and elected official said that Metro needs to keep its current maintenance trajectory.

U.S. senators from Virginia and Maryland wrote a letter to Metro saying safety should be the top priority. They urged keeping the same hours and overnight safety maintenance schedule, “to ensure that critical safety work is completed as soon as possible and to prevent more daytime single-tracking.

“Without these (overnight) hours, the system will make up the shortfall by doing more daytime single-tracking, which creates even greater challenges, and the work will ultimately take longer,” the letter read.

This story originally appeared on WAMU.