Unsuck DC Metro: Metro Holds Riders Hostage--Again

Monday, April 8, 2013

Metro Holds Riders Hostage--Again

Metro had yet another derailment Saturday night, leaving riders stranded yet again for over an hour without any communication. Metro told the Post it was a non-passenger train.

In recent months, Metro has held riders hostage on the Orange Line, Green Line and now on the Red Line.

And of course, a derailment is a pretty serious event, even if no one was hurt. I think it's just a matter of time.

I don't understand why local politicians refuse to see just how bad Metro is. Instead, if the Metro board discusses this event at all, it will most likely be a long back slapping celebration of how no one was injured.

The derailment was not the only incident this weekend.

From Susan:

Was stranded on a disabled metro train underground near Tenleytown from 12:30 a.m. 2 a.mm Sunday with hundreds of others.

I'm not upset that the train broke down-things happen. But we had no communication about what to expect. Police and a supervisor finally boarded the train (after 60+ minutes) after another train attempted to push us and failed.

We had to walk through all the train cars to board another train behind us and then go back to Tenleytown and switch trains again.

You think they'd have a communication and action plan by now on how to deal with disabled trains.

People were crossing between cars and peeing behind the door because we didn't know how long we'd be trapped.

Here are some reports from FixWMATA, who was caught up in the mess.

Comments (18)

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+9 Vote up Vote down

sadf · 624 weeks ago

Incredible! I wonder what the price of urine cleanup alone is after these incidents.

1 reply · active 624 weeks ago

+1 Vote up Vote down

Stan Desselscum · 624 weeks ago

Haha, you think they actually clean that up? LOL

+4 Vote up Vote down

Anony-moose · 624 weeks ago

With respect to the blog, these seem like two separate incidents. Susan is reporting about being stuck on a train near Tenleytown. The derailment of the non-passenger train is over at NoMa. What does this mean? Metro screwed up twice on the red-line in quick succession. We need to make sure the depth of their error is clear by not mixing the two events. Also, metro telling the post about the non-passenger incident may have truly been the non-passenger train at NoMa, and not Susan's train at tenleytown.

1 reply · active 624 weeks ago

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Chris · 624 weeks ago

These were 2 incidents... in fact there were 3 incidents Saturday night: in addition to these 2 there was a "train malfunction" at Forest Glen too around the same time as the Tenleytown one.

+6 Vote up Vote down

NoNo · 624 weeks ago

There is indeed two different incidents.
The press communicate published sunday by metro is concerning the no-passenger-train derailment near Rhode Island. However this communicate is also full of shit: They claimed that riders experienced not more than 10 minutes delay. However, at 10:30pm on saturday, hours after the incident, passengers were still experiencing delays in Chinatown... at a point that after waiting a metro for 15 minutes, the train operator had to ask people to stop boarding the train and to take the next one!

+13 Vote up Vote down

karah 81p · 624 weeks ago

We walked home from Bethesda to Van Ness yesterday afternoon. Avoided the metro and had nice weather. Double plus good.

Now for the out-of-towners that did not use the metro this weekend (but were here other days for the cherry blossoms) to berate us the rest of the year when we complain online about metro. After all, it was good for them being tourists with no track work so it MUST be good for us dealing with track work and fubarred rush hours during commutes, right?

2 replies · active 624 weeks ago

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@VeggieTart · 624 weeks ago

Yeah, Metro did this whole publicity thing about suspending track work during Cherry Blossom season so tourists could ride Metro to see them. Once the blossoms have died and fallen to the ground, count on months--probably years--of single-tracking, closed sections of Metro, and long delays to get anywhere on the weekend.

+2 Vote up Vote down

karah 81p · 624 weeks ago

I am sure this weekend was 'fun' for them though and hopefully they got a small taste of what we have the rest of the year. I decided to make a trip to Columbia Heights to go to Sticky Fingers on Saturday.

+6 Vote up Vote down

FreeMarketFan · 624 weeks ago

If anyone wants a laugh check out the PR Spin Dr. Gridlock is doing for his BFF Dan. You would think it was just a slight schedule adjustment that didn't concern anyone....

Try telling that to those of us that were out Saturday night and had no idea why things were running so slow. But hey, at least there were stickers on the machines and some nice new cameras that weren't manned

+19 Vote up Vote down

unsuckdcmetro 92p · 624 weeks ago

Sorry for the confusion. Indeed two incidents. One half of the post was intended to be about the derailment, and the other about hostages.

I'm not sure why these things happen when I try to take some time off.

Text should be more clear now.

1 reply · active 624 weeks ago

+9 Vote up Vote down

karah 81p · 624 weeks ago

That is okay. We have learned by now that when you say you are taking time off that metro will have more of a fubar then normal to spite everyone because you are not looking. :)

Hope you had a good time!

+8 Vote up Vote down

Dan & Richard · 624 weeks ago

We don't want to hide problems, thats the worst thing you can do.

-You're Welcome!
Dan & RIchard

+6 Vote up Vote down

Sarah · 624 weeks ago

I was on the train that was stuck in a tunnel between Van Ness and Tenleytown for over an hour and a half on Saturday night around 12:30-2am. We were so in the dark about what was happening that I actually came to this blog hoping there would be a post about what exactly happened to the train. At one point, we were even concerned that there was some sort of bomb threat because a Metro worker came tearing through the train car and started yelling at the people sitting in the back-to-back seats (I was one of them) to "GET UP GET UP GET UP!" He then lifted the seats up, fiddled with something, slammed them back down, and moved onto the next one. Between that and being jolted violently forward by a working train (we weren't told they were going to try pushing our train until after they started to try it), there were a few minutes there when I was started to get very worried about just what kind of situation we were in. Turns out it was just your average Metro fail, with a very full train of mostly drunk people (I was actually glad to be sober) not knowing what was happening. My boyfriend was expecting me at Friendship Heights at 12:30am, and he was extremely worried when I never showed up, and when I finally did make it to the station, he told me that the station manager wouldn't tell him anything, so he was worried sick, thinking I had been kidnapped or something. I am beyond disgusted with Metro. Rather than handle things in any way that makes sense, they just try to pretend nothing's wrong. Why in hell couldn't the station manager have told my boyfriend that there was a train stuck in a tunnel, so he'd have known that was likely the reason I was late? And why on earth didn't they have us all file onto the working train and back us up to Van Ness RIGHT AWAY instead of an hour and a half later? Who's idiotic idea was it to try to PUSH a broken train FULL OF PEOPLE out of the tunnel with another train? Luckily, I no longer have to take the Metro to work-- Saturday night was the first time I'd been on it in months. It's a shame that Metro is not only unreliable, but actually dangerous

3 replies · active 624 weeks ago

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Guest · 624 weeks ago

Why didn't u call ur boyfriend?

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Sarah · 624 weeks ago

No service in the tunnel. :-p

+1 Vote up Vote down

iolaire 71p · 624 weeks ago

Sarah, please post your comment on the bottom of the post story. We need read people to post real information on those stories since the Post never bothers to figure out what happened: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dr-gridlock/w...