Heather Curtis
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON (WMAL) — Metro riders won’t have to deal with dirty carpets and unintelligible PA systems for much longer.
Metro’s finance committee voted Thursday to replace the old 5,000-series cars with new 7,000-series. The new cars will not be carpeted and will have electronic signs to let riders know what stop is ahead.
Tuesday the Federal Transit Administration gave WMATA permission to replace — rather than refurbish — the old cars in order to improve safety and reliability.
WMATA will be buying 220 new cars, allowing the transit agency to replace all the old ones in the system while keeping a few extra to prepare for service expansion.
The committee also changed the 2016 and 2017 improvement plans by adding $430 million to buy the new cars and $200 million to make upgrades to the power system necessary to run those cars.
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