Can the Red Metro line in DC get any worse?

I'm almost afraid to ask ...

For the past year it's been plagued by mishaps: 1) the Silver Spring tunnel communications issue, 2) the rail split, 3) the incredibly slow and bad scheduling of work for the N.Y. Ave stop.

And there have been so many more mishaps that the details have been lost in the haze.

And now this little disaster at Woodley Park?

Does anybody else get the feeling that what was once an asset to D.C. tourism is becoming a liability?

What little disaster?

An empty train backed into a parked train.

Eva,
About 20 people injured. ``Parked'' is a little misleading. The train was stopped to let passengers on and off at a stop (which is a major tourist stop BTW) and an empty car rolled down grade into the train with about 70 passengers on board.

Great photo on washpost.com.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2004Nov4.html

Oh, yeah, I remembered another on Metro's great moves: its plan to go to two-car trains after 10. moronic. that lasted about a week.

The accident still continued to slow Metro trains today as single tracking was going on by the affected area. I will presume that normal service will resume as soon as the accident reconstruction is done.

And then there are the more "normal" delays of cars with door or brake problems.

People are getting fed up but, over all, the system runs well. When there are problems, though, much aggravation can result if, say, the affected line is the only one you can use to get where you are going.

I have been using the yellow line to get off at an alternative Metro stop to get to my place of business for the past couple of days.

Tough times for Metro commuters!

"And then there are the more "normal" delays of cars with door or brake problems."

Were you around when the Metro first started running? In those days, door and brake problems truly were normal, in the sense that they were the norm. More often than not, the doors wouldn't close because a car was "overloaded" (i.e., about half-full) and the trains would just sit in the stations. People were routinely late to work and "I was stuck in the Metro" was always a valid and accurate excuse. Ahhh, those were the days.

KT certainly brought Metro back into perspective.

Metro is not without problems but for the most part it's clean, ontime, and better than any other form of transportation in the Washington area.

Many of us do remember when it was in its early stages and some of us remember before Metro when the DC population was smaller and the traffic problems were still as bad.

How many remember that snowy day in DC when the airliner crashed on the 14th St bridge? Do you also remember that there was an accident on the Metro that same afternoon that cost someone's life?

fyi, at the very time LN was the posting, the Red Line was backed up from Rhode Island to Fort Totten -- past the N.Y. Ave construction.

It wasn't my intention to minimize the Metro's current problems, just to recall how godawful it was when it first opened. I don't worry about it any more -- now I'm in a different city getting caught in different mass transit jams.

People in DC love to complain about Metro. It's NYC-envy.

Metro went through a great period where delays were the exception, not the norm, and sometimes you could even get a seat during rush hour. But its success, and some poor management has lead to current problems. They didn't anticipate the numbers that now ride the metro, so there aren't enough trains or tracks, escalators are continually breaking down (and for some reason they take months to fix). Can't imagine how disabled people use the metro--the elevators are rarely operational, and they end up having to a shuttle to different station.

Hopefully they can turn things around. It only took the head of Metro 8 years to decide that it might be a good thing if he rode Metro regularly.