Heather Curtis
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON – (WMAL) Metro’s Safe Track maintenance surges have made for frustrating commutes, but they have also greatly sped up the amount of track work that can be done in a given amount of time.
In the first three surges, more than 17,000 of the system’s 240,000 total wooden rail ties, or beams laid across the railroad bed to secure the rails, were replaced.
In the past when there have only been weekend closures and earlier nightly closures, crews were able to replace about 15,000 ties.
“If we were to do that same type of work just using the non-revenue hours that we have, that would take us nine years to do, just to give you a sense of scale,” Wiedefeld said at a meeting of Metro’s board Thursday.
Still, Wiedefeld and board chair Jack Evans stressed Safe Track is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to getting Metro where it needs to be.
“Safe Track is an attempt to find the 15 worst areas of the system and try to bring them up to speed. The rest of the system is still in a state of disrepair, and we’re working on that at the same time,” Evans said.
Safe Track surge 9 is underway now with continuous single tracking weekdays on the Orange Line between Vienna and West Falls church.
Starting this Saturday that stretch will be totally shut on weekends.
Surge 9 ends October 26. All 15 surges of Safe Track are expected to be done in late March or early April of 2016.
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