Photo by woodleywonderworks on Flickr.

There was an electrical fire outside of McPherson Square this morning that caused delays of up to an hour for some Blue, Orange, and Silver Line riders. Have Metro fires increased lately? Did Metro handle this well? Our contributors weigh in.

The fire, which happened around 4:30 this morning, closed part of downtown’s subway tunnel. Orange and Blue Line trains have been single tracking ever since, with eastbound trains skipping Farragut West and McPherson altogether, and eastbound Silver Line trains turning back at Ballston. Buses have been filling in for trains, and Metro will begin repairs tonight.

Greater Greater Washington contributor Gray Kimbrough wrote a few questions to others on our discussion list:

  1. Is there really an increasing number of fires on Metro tracks, or does it only feel that way lately?
  2. Is this going to be the default service pattern for the Silver Line whenever there is a problem on the SOB shared track?
  3. In hindsight, could WMATA have handled this better? They seem to be saying that since they sent out alerts before rush hour, they did the best they could and commuters should be pretty okay with that. I’m not sure if there’s anything more that they could have done, but I’m not sure how smart that stance is.

Stephen Repetski said:

  1. It may just feel that way due to different media coverage they get now. That said, I haven’t collated longer-term data on the topic.
  2. Likely; cut service on one to attempt to save it on the other two.
  3. Yes. So much yes. Not even the train operators really knew what was going on this morning, and there were clearly communication breakdowns between train operators, supervisors, and the control center. Metro could have operated a shuttle train through the single-tracking area, and have been organized in their alerts (all trains skipping McPherson/Farragut West — no wait, eastbound trains skipping McPherson — no wait, westbound skipping them!). Communication between train operators, ROCC, and supervisors was horrendous.

Matt Johnson added:

I’ll add that there are a variety of causes of smoke in the Metro system. While it’s easy to conflate smoke with fire, they are not the same thing, and do not result in the same consequences.

I don’t know whether the number of smoke incidences are increasing. However, I do know that WMATA and local jurisdictions are responding to these more strongly than they used to. Any smoke event at all, no matter how minor, now results in the fire department responding. Most of the time, they just stand around while Metro workers resolve the problem. However, what that means is single-tracking.

I suspect strongly that this smoke event was probably caused or exacerbated by the rain we had yesterday/this morning. One of the causes of smoke and fire (counter-intuitively) on Metro is water intrusion. That’s one reason that so many of these events happen on the Red Line in the vicinity of Friendship Heights, Bethesda, and Medical Center, where ground water intrusion is a major problem, and has been since the line opened in 1984.