Metro kicked off its SafeTrack rebuilding program this week to finally tackle in a serious way the long-festering track problems of our regional transit system. This yearlong program is going to be inconvenient for everyone: rail riders, car drivers, businesses, etc.
While service reductions to undertake this work will impact hundreds of thousands of riders during rush hours, most of the emails, calls, tweets and messages that I’ve received have raised concerns about ending Metrorail service at midnight on Friday and Saturday nights for the duration of the plan. After speaking with Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority General Manager Paul Wiedefeld, I am convinced that ending rail service at midnight for the next year is critical to ensuring that we have a safe Metro system moving forward. We simply need more time to access the tracks.
As Chairman of WMATA’s Board of Directors, it’s my job to advocate for the sustainability of our transit system. I applaud Wiedefeld for putting together the SafeTrack rehabilitation plan to carry out three years’ worth of critical track maintenance work in the next 12 months and to put the safety of our riders over service revenue.
While the 15 surges outlined in the plan are getting most of the attention, Metro will also be more aggressively fixing the entire system over the next year. We currently have 19 hours of time throughout the week to get workers on the track, and it’s clear that this approach has not worked.
Ridership on Friday and Saturday nights between midnight and 3 a.m. is about 3,000 riders per hour and has been dropping for the last five years. For comparison, ridership during the week ranges from about 13,000 per hour from 5 to 6 a.m. to more than 90,000 per hour during the rush hours. Even during the weekend, daytime ridership ranges from 6,000 per hour first-thing Sunday morning to more than 25,000 per hour between 4 and 5 p.m. I’m concerned about people who are out working or enjoying the city on Friday and Saturday night, and we will need to work to find alternate travel options (buses, taxis, shared ride services, etc.) for them to travel safely. But Metro must get those extra hours back for maintenance.
Ending service at midnight is going to be inconvenient, there’s no doubt about it. Unfortunately, service across the system is going to be inconvenient for the next 12-plus months as we implement the SafeTrack plan. The system we have today is unreliable and somewhat unsafe. We need to make it better for all our riders, which can hopefully include late-night customers again in the future.
There is more work to do, as the general manager has detailed in his Customer Accountability Report (CARe), but the SafeTrack plan is a major first step in addressing some of our greatest infrastructure challenges.
Jack Evans is the District Council member for Ward 2, representing Georgetown and other neighborhoods since 1991.
