Hitachi enters the region while Metro plans for all 8-car trains

Nearly a year to the day after Metro announced that Hitachi Rail will build the agency’s next fleet of train cars, the railcar company announced it will be building a new manufacturing facility in Hagerstown, Maryland, which it proposed in order to help win the railcar order. With a Metrorail order of at least 256 cars and up to 800 and a permanent facility in the region, Metro and Hitachi have set themselves up for a long-term partnership.

Metro has made a number of changes to its railcar fleet since Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld took the job in 2016. The 1000-series, known for lacking necessary crashworthiness features, were the first railcar series to be permanently retired, beginning in April 2016. The unreliable 4000 and 5000-series railcars quickly followed. All were replaced by the new Kawasaki 7000-series cars.

The new Hitachi cars, which Metro designates as the forthcoming 8000-series, will help achieve what the agency thinks it needs to accommodate future growth. Based on long-term ridership estimates for 2030, the agency wants to grow its railcar fleet by 250 cars, from 1,278 to 1,528, and possibly more for additional ridership needs past 2040. The 8000’s would no longer be a small “sub-fleet” follow-on to the 7000’s.

Metro’s ridership estimates and stated equipment needs are contained in a report the agency releases every five years called the Metrorail Fleet Management Plan. Recently updated for 2022, the document lays out agency staff estimates of future ridership growth patterns, as well as justifications to acquire more rail cars and the additional maintenance and storage projects needed to support them.

Even though the Coronavirus pandemic has tempered current Metrorail ridership and demands for service, the agency thinks the impact will be short-lived. The recovery period to rail ridership might be “prolonged and uncertain,” the report states, but the pandemic is not currently anticipated to alter capacity demand projections in this plan’s 2030 and 2040 milestone years.”

Metrorail ridership has averaged below 250,000 trips per day since the pandemic began in March 2020, while pre-pandemic ridership had begun a recovery and was growing upwards of 650,000 trips per day prior.

The refreshed rail management plan bases the number of railcars needed off of what the agency says it requires to run peak period service during the busiest hour of the day, which in turn is based off of the long-term ridership estimates. While the document notes that the impacts of the pandemic are “not yet known,” it also reduces train frequencies needed for 2030 ridership from a system running 100% eight-car trains every six minutes to a system running 100% eight-car trains every seven minutes.

The pre-pandemic days saw Metro running a mixture of six- and eight-car train lengths across all of its six lines to keep up with demand. Trains ran every six minutes until Metro’s 2018 fiscal year that began July 2017, when the agency cut service by 25%. Trains thereafter ran every eight minutes during peak morning and afternoon periods as part of the General Manager’s “reality check” budget to deal with a revenue shortfall and maintenance needs.

More railcars means more support services and rail yard expansion

With the 7000-series railcars which Metro received between 2015 and 2020, the agency made an operational decision to only operate them as four or eight-car trains. Deterring the use of six-car 7000-series trains, while technically feasible, meant the agency should be able to operate the trains more efficiently in its rail yards by having to break apart and make new trains less frequently.

However, Metro’s existing rail yards aren’t all configured in the best ways to work with all eight-car trains. The fleet management report notes that while Metro’s existing yards can hold 1522 cars (244 more than the agency currently has), “Metro can only utilize 78% of its total storage capacity with eight-car trains as many storage track lengths do not translate to multiples of eight.” Greenbelt Yard is the only yard, Metro says, that’s designed to store eight-car trains where “almost all” storage tracks can hold 16 cars.

To address issues like this, Metro’s plan suggests adding capacity at two yards, and building a brand new one. The agency plans to increase storage at New Carrollton Yard from 120 to 176 cars, but has future hopes to expand the yard to store 232 cars and double its maintenance capacity from 16 cars to 32. The Heavy Rail Overhaul facility being planned along the eastern Orange Line would add 40 maintenance spaces as well.

The decision to target running only eight-car trains means the agency would also need to spend money to upgrade its power system. With the “legacy” cars closer to retirement - the 2000, 3000, and 6000-series - being the only ones that can run as shorter trains, there would come a day when the needs of the eight-car trains would max out the power available from the electrical system.

Metro’s fleet plan in conflict with Board direction?

The calculations used by Metro’s fleet management plan are based on peak rush-hour railcar needs, which assumes that rail ridership trends look similar after the pandemic. Some corporate executives are excited to get their workers back into the office and rebooting the in-person 9-5 workday, but not all white-collar workers may be ready to give up the flexibility that working from home during the pandemic has provided.

Metro staff began responding to some of the shifts in work culture with proposals to the agency’s Board of Directors for consideration in the 2021 budget. Among the recommendations were proposals to make the base service level during the day more frequent, rather than focusing on the peak morning and evening periods, as a way to “better meet the needs of existing riders.”

A proposed rail service concept from 2021 focused on maintaining service at 12 minutes or better all day, 15 minutes or better late at night, and 10 minutes at peak, and was sold as a way to increase system ridership during off-peak periods. Making use of existing spare capacity, like empty trains during off-peak periods, is one way agency staff looked to increase rail service at a lower cost than adding trains to the most congested time of the day when adding trains and additional employees would be more expensive.

Portions of the proposal made it into the agency’s 2023 budget, where trains will arrive every 12 minutes all day, every day until 9:30pm, when frequencies drop to every 15 minutes. On the Red Line, trains will continue their 2022 schedule, coming every six minutes and dropping to 10 at 9:30pm.

Metro hopes the streamlined all-day service will help drive more ridership as the system recovers from the Coronavirus pandemic, but many things at this point are uncertain, including how the pandemic ends. What happens the next few years will dictate the next iteration of the fleet management plan, and to what extent Metro follows through on it or has to go back to the drawing board.

Disclosure: GGWash Board of Directors chair Tracy Hadden Loh is also on Metro’s board. In keeping with our editorial policy, board members maintain no oversight of editorial decision-making.