This Week's Metro Adventures: Amazing Red Line Halloween Costume

There's never a dull week when it comes to Metro, which is in the midst of a budget crunch, the SafeTrack plan and its associated "Surges," and lots and lots of disgruntled customers. So we at Patch are rounding up some of the most colorful WMATA-related events of the week for our readers.

In this week's edition, we call attention to one pretty awesome Red Line-inspired Halloween costume, huge crowds marked the beginning of Surge No. 10 and the local union wore some crazy costumes to protest WMATA's proposed budget cutbacks.

The best Halloween costume ever? It's from last year, but this woman's Halloween costume would certainly work for 2016 considering that the Red Line is currently undergoing a pretty brutal "Surge" that involves something worse than single-tracking: full line segment shutdowns for weeks on end.

"Costume" of a lady last year saying she dressed up as the Red Line. This still cracks me up. #safetrack pic.twitter.com/lnqGHJwYba
— T (@T_Mac202) October 31, 2016

Massive crowds in Gallery Place as Surge No. 10 begins. The 10th of 15 Surges as part of Metro's SafeTrack plan involves shutting down two stations on the Red Line, and that means huge backups at Gallery Place, which services the Red as well as the Green and Yellow lines.

Gallery Place is...an experience right now (aka it's 9 a.m. on a Monday). At least there are platform monitors here today #wmata #SafeTrack pic.twitter.com/2shMOG3obV
— Faiz Siddiqui (@faizsays) October 31, 2016

Spooky, scary union reps. Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, which represents 13,000 Metro employees, is not happy with Metro as the agency proposes mass layoffs to deal with a budget shortfall, and the president of the union was joined by two people dressed up as Grim Reapers to declare that the system is in a "death spiral" if it goes forward with the plan, according to a Washington Post report.

As promised, ATU Local 689 protest features a five-foot tall Grim Reaper representing proposed #wmata budget pic.twitter.com/lkimWV2zW2
— Faiz Siddiqui (@faizsays) October 31, 2016

Image via WMATA, edited by Patch Staff