Massive Improvement in Metro Reliability, WMATA Claims

WASHINGTON, DC — Complaints about the Metro system have reached a crescendo in the midst of SafeTrack and constant problems at Metro stations across the system, but WMATA claims that things are actually getting a lot better.

WMATA said in a statement Tuesday that half as many trains had been offloaded in the first three months of 2017 compared to the same period last year.

"The significant improvement in customer reliability was the result of the ongoing, accelerated retirement of all 1000- and 4000-series railcars, Metro's oldest and least reliable, respectively, combined with a "get well" maintenance program on the transit authority's other railcars to make them more reliable," the statement reads.

A total of 218 trains were offloaded in the first three months of the year, which comes out to 2.4 offloads per day. In that same period in 2016, there were 433 offloads.

Metro's mean distance between delays, which tracks how far railcars travel before experiencing a problem, improved from 48,064 miles to 81,451 miles over those time frames, an improvement of nearly 70 percent, Metro claims.

Metro is replacing older 1000 and 4000 series cars with newer 7000 series cars. So far, 70 percent of 1000 series cars and about half of 4000 series cars have been retired. A total of 39 7000 series cars have been pushed into service.

"These are all signs that Metro is starting to get 'back to good,'" said Metro General Manager/CEO Paul J. Wiedefeld in the statement. "Once we complete the yearlong SafeTrack program in June, customers will notice their commutes are more predictable - and more likely to be on time."

The statement adds: "The improvement in railcar reliability is already resulting in more predictable, on-time trips for customers. Metro has implemented an industry-first method of measuring on-time performance that is based on the actual customer experience, tracking travel times from the moment a customer taps into the system to the moment they tap out. So far this month, Metro customers have arrived within five minutes of their expected arrival time about 90 percent of the time, even with SafeTrack maintenance in effect."

Image via WMATA