Metro Rail May Shut Down Entire Lines for Up to Six Months

Following the lack of District-wide chaos during a daylong shutdown of the entire Metro rail system March 16, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority CEO and General Manager Paul Wiedefeld and Metro Board Chair Jack Evans said they may need to shut down entire rail lines for as long as six months to perform maintenance.

“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,” the Washington Post quoted Evans as saying. “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.” Wiedefeld is expected to make his decision on what he will do in the next six weeks.