Washington DC's Subway

[NozomiFan]

While I was in DC, I had to take the Subway a lot. Or as it is also called, the Metro. Now the past week, DC has had major heat making these things impossible to run. As they are so old, they are starting to break down and causing everything from doors and engines to malfunction. Any thoughts to this? Also the MARC/Amtrak have had serious issues where fires were breaking out in the cabs.

[bikkuri bahn]

A problem when you don't spend the necessary funds over the long term to upgrade infrastructure or equipment.  But, DC has contracted with KHI to supply 428 new railcars:

 

http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/single-view/view/10/washington-metro-confirms-kawasaki-deal.html

 

*shouldn't this thread be somewhere else??

[Guest ___]

This is nothing new. It's just not the older equipment either, the newest equipment, the 6000-series built by Alsrtom had issues with the doors. But the cause of door failures is not WMATA, nor deferredd mnt, but the stupid eff'ing tourists. Every summer, the city is over run by them, and during the after noon hours, tourist force hold the doors open trying to stuff more family members in. Metro regulars know better than to do this, but tourists for some reason think Metro doors are like elevators and have bumpers, so they force the doors back open, wrecking the mechanism and taking trains out of service. For us regular riders, this is aggravating no end. And it is a regular occurrence for regulars to snap at out of towners not to do this. A lot of times, the tourists snap back that they need to hold the train for the rest of their family to get on which at rush hour will not happen. In case you can't tell by my tone in this reply, this is an ongoing issue that aggravates us who ride the system daily/weekly (I ride three days a week for work right now) the other issue that gets us is tourists not standing to the right on the escalators (the working ones that is)

 

As for the other equipment failures, they are not as widespread as people think. The 5000 and 6000 issues are related to software problems, the 1000-3000 have all been completely rebuilt by Alstom over the course of the past five years to near new status. While the physical infrastructure has been deteriorated due to a lack of dedicated funding cause by a very complicated tri-government situation, (DC, VA, and VA) Metrorail itself has a fleet of railcars in good health despite a shift in funding from rail to bus over the past decade. And considering record ridership, and a system well over designed capacity the system is holding up incredibly well.

[to2leo]

Hmm, I wonder what NYC subways does? I bet they have the same type of tourists too. 

[Guest ___]

Not too concerned with NYC. Here in DC, we have two tracks and if a train goes out of service at 4:00 cause of a bloody tourist holding a door open, the system grinds to a stop.

[bikkuri bahn]

Big families those tourists must be.  They must really mug those doors.  Don't conductors have manual control over doors closing? (or is it one person driver only trains?) One thing about Americans, most (I think about 90~95%) have never ridden on a train of any type, so they just are clueless about etiquette, preparing to board/depart, etc.  They think in terms of getting out of their minivan/SUV, and take their dear 'ol time doin' it...