Washington area Metro closes for safety check
Print Edition
AN unprecedented shutdown for a safety inspection of the Metro subway system in the Washington area of the United States yesterday inconvenienced hundreds of thousands of people.
The federal government encouraged employees to take the day off or telecommute, children were allowed to miss school and some workers woke up early to take bus after bus, hail pricey taxis or slog through traffic, resigning themselves to a long day.
Michaun Jordan, 51, usually takes a commuter train, then Metro rail lines and a bus to get to her job as a finance officer for the federal government. But yesterday, she took a US$15 taxi after her train, then waited at Rosslyn station in Virginia for a bus.
“At first I was a bit disappointed. Then I thought about it — it’s best to be safe,” she said.
The nation’s second-busiest transit system was shut down at midnight on Tuesday for a system-wide safety inspection of its third-rail power cables, prompted by a series of electrical fires. It will reopen at 5am today unless inspectors find an immediate threat to passenger safety, which the system’s general manager said was unlikely.
Ridership on the Metro has dipped as the system’s reliability has deteriorated, and gripes on social media occur daily.
Still, riders take more than 700,000 trips every day because it’s still the best way to get downtown from Maryland, Virginia and the city’s outer neighborhoods.
“It’s always slow, always crowded,” Bob Jones, 26, of Arlington, Virginia, said of Metro.
But yesterday, as he waited for his normal bus to work but planned a walk of more than an hour home without his usual option of the subway, he said he wasn’t too upset with the decision to close.
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