Excessive heat forced D.C. metro workers to temporarily halt repairs that were supposed to take place over the weekend.
The record high temperatures in Washington, D.C. made maintenance work difficult over the weekend, and forced officials to delay various track repairs scheduled at the last minute. Maintenance crews continued the work into the Monday morning rush hour commute, causing delays across the Red Line. Passengers experienced the heaviest delays between the Medical Center and Grosvenor stations; trains were forced to single track until the repairs were completed, reports FOX 5.
Crews restored normal service by 7 a.m. EST, however officials reminded Red Line riders to expect delays through Aug. 18 due to scheduled single tracking between the Shady Grove and Twinbrook stations from SafeTrack. (RELATED: Small Businesses In DC Losing Profits And Employees Due To Early Metro Closings)
Officials added the weekend repairs to the scheduled Surge 7 SafeTrack repairs last week, after a brutal report from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) found numerous safety threats throughout the transit system. The FTA’s critique found Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) officials failed to follow their own rules for track inspections before the July 29 derailment. Officials were only conducting track inspections in the area of the accident roughly once a month, despite a policy mandating tracks be checked and inspected every two weeks.
WMATA officials expanded the weekend work after the troubling revelations from their own internal investigation of the derailment, and the FTA’s report. The investigations revealed track issues, similar to the ones that caused the derailment, on the track between the Shady Grove and Grosvenor stations.
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