The chairman of the Washington Metro board said Wednesday that the city’s train system is in such disrepair that entire lines may have to be shut down for months at a time.
Chairman Jack Evans told a conference of regional leaders marking the system’s 40th anniversary that night-and-weekends maintenance is no longer enough.
“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,” he said. “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,” Mr. Evans said, according to a report in The Washington Post.
Just earlier this month, Metro had the biggest non-weather-related disruption in its history, shutting down its entire system for emergency track inspections.
When Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld was asked at the same conference whether he was considering monthslong closures, he said only that he hasn’t decided but would do so in a few weeks.
“I’m keeping all my options open.” he said, agreeing that the current maintenance regimen is unsustainable.
“In the last few years, we’ve been trying to do this [maintenance] in a sort of piecemeal way, and basically we’ve alienated everyone,” he said.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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