Last week, as part of its annual “Bike To Work Day” event Metro gave away free U-lock bike locks to anyone who showed up at one of the pit stops it had sprinkled throughout the area.
Metro Transit Police set up at five different train stations in D.C., Maryland and Virginia and gave a U-lock to any cyclist who registered their bike with the police.
The Daily Caller News Foundation inquired about the quantity and price paid for the U-locks handed out, but repeated requests for the information were ignored, and when it did respond to requests for comment it said TheDCNF would need to go through its formal information request process.
Morgan Dye, a spokeswoman for Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which oversees Metro, told TheDCNF to submit what she called a “records request” (which is really just two numbers easily accessible on an invoice sheet somewhere in its office) through its Public Access to Records Policy.
TheDCNF later learned from a cyclist that acquired a bike lock during the event that Metro was giving away the Kryptonite Keeper 12 Standard Bicycle U-Lock.
This particular model retails for about $26 on Amazon.
When presented with this information, the Metro spokeswoman again did not return a request for comment.
Within the same week of the bike lock give away, not one, but two separate station fires caused massive train delays, as they both came during morning rush hour.
The first came last Monday when smoke filled the tunnel between two train stations in Virginia, causing temporary delays on three separate train lines and leaving many riders stranded on their way to work. The second happened Tuesday when an electrical cable caught on fire at the Bethesda station, causing trains to skip that stop and long waits all along the red line.
A woman died of respiratory failure in a similar smoke incident in January after a third rail started arcing and filled one of the tunnels with smoke. Many more riders had to be hospitalized due to smoke inhalation.
An NTSB report released later that month found that power continued to be supplied to the arcing third rail for 30 minutes after smoke had been reported.
Metro may actually be doing commuters a favor by encouraging them to bike to work, if they want to get there on time, because Metro can’t seem to keep its stations from catching fire.
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