Metro took 72 train operators out of service on Sunday evening after a review from the agency’s chief safety officer found they had not undergone a required recertification training in a year.

Metro says the move will cause delays for Yellow and Green line trains, which will run every 20 minutes instead of every 15 minutes until the end of the month — another delay piled on top of the agency’s existing decline in service after a derailment last fall revealed safety flaws in 60% of the railcar fleet.

“These changes are temporary and only expected for the next two weeks,” Metro spokeswoman Sherri Ly said in an emailed statement. “At stations served by both lines, trains will arrive on average every 10 minutes instead of every 7-8 minutes.”

Trains will be 20 minutes apart at Yellow and Green line stops with only one line. For comparison, Ly noted the Blue, Orange and Silver lines are currently running at 20-minute intervals, and Red Line trains come every 10 minutes.

The agency says there may be other impacts across the system as well, with extra trains not available to deal with overcrowding, help move people to special events, or backfill for trains that develop maintenance problems and need to go out of service.

“The Board finds this unacceptable and extremely disappointing,” said Metro Board chair Paul Smedberg in a statement announcing the new service cut. “We support Metro management’s decision to immediately remove from service operators who became out of compliance more than a year ago as a first step.”

“The Board directed Metro management to provide a full accounting of how and why this occurred and develop a plan to ensure it is remedied as fast as possible,” he added.

The 72 operators are not alone — the review found a total of 250 out of Metro’s 500 train operators were behind on their recertifications — but the 72 operators that were removed have the longest lapses in taking the training, of a year or more.

The recertification, which has components in the classroom and under supervision in the railyard and on the Metro system, is a refresher course designed to remind train operators of protocols and evaluate their performance. Metro’s announcement of the news estimates that it will take as long as three months for all the operators to recertify.

Local officials expressed frustration over the news. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called it “disappointing” and “a management problem” in a Twitter thread.

“It has been disappointing to residents, workers, and visitors that, as DC has reopened, Metro has not been able to deliver the level of service we expect and deserve,” she tweeted.

“The transit riders of the D.C. region deserve so much better than they are receiving,” added Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson, who also works at Amtrak. “We have failed them. We must do better.”

Transit riders themselves agreed, and many took to Twitter following Metro’s announcement.

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Metro began investigating possible lapses after the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission, the independent safety board that audits Metro’s operations, found that the agency had dropped the ball on the refresher trainings — and in fact “had stopped train operator recertifications entirely,” according to a tweet from the commission.

That information led the agency’s Chief Safety Officer, Theresa Impastato, to investigate.

Metro spokeswoman Sherri Ly said in an emailed statement that the agency had issued waivers to temporarily allow operators to forgo the recertification training, but was still gathering information about why and how the waivers were put in place.

In general, Ly said, waivers are sometimes given due to employee attendance or lack of equipment availability. At the beginning of the pandemic, problems with social distancing or challenges for employees getting to a training site were also reasons for waivers — though the agency officially stopped granting extensions for pandemic-related issues in December 2020, Ly said.

“The Operations management team has the authority to issue waivers however there were no checks and balances in place to ensure waivers did not extend beyond a reasonable timeframe, typically 30 days,” Ly said.

Most senior executives outside of the operations division had no knowledge of the train operator waivers, Ly said.

Metro said it was also examining records for more than 2,500 bus operators to figure out if their refresher training has also lapsed.

This is the latest in a string of issues affecting Metro service exactly at the moment the agency needs to win riders back. Metro will have to confront a $300 million budget gap next year, when federal coronavirus relief money runs out. Ridership has bounced back to just under 40% of pre-pandemic levels, as some workers return to more regular commuting patterns. The Metro Board tentatively approved fare discounts to try to lure regular passengers back. The agency doesn’t expect ridership to fully return until 2024.

But safety problems have meant longer wait times and crowding when riders do get on the train. Last fall, a derailment investigation uncovered problems with more than 700 of the newest cars in Metro’s railcar fleet, prompting the transit agency to remove them — and to severely cut back service to compensate. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating, Metro leaders have been dragged in front of Congress to account for the problems, and riders are deeply frustrated with poor service levels.

Metro hopes to bring the cars back sometime this summer, but the estimate of returning the cars to service has been changed multiple times, and the safety commission wants to look at the plan to fix the original problem more closely before that happens.

Planned maintenance on the bridge over the Potomac will further disrupt Yellow line service between L’Enfant Plaza and the Pentagon this summer.