Metro board chairman Jack Evans has announced that segments of Washington Metro may be shut down for up 6 months to do the necessary extended repairs. At a minimum some lines will be shut down for extended periods of time.
“The system right now, in order to do the maintenance that needs to be done, cannot be done on three hours a night and on weekends. It just can’t,” said Evans, who also is a D.C. Council member (D-Ward 2).
“So in order to do repairs that are necessary, it may come to the point where we have to close the entire Blue Line for six months. People will go crazy. But there are going to be hard decisions that have to be made in order to get this fixed,” Evans said.
Evans singled out the Blue Line several times but said any of the 6 lines may be closed for extended periods of time.
The New York Subway system was built over a hundred years ago has never had shut downs of 6 months. It was built by the private sector and not the government which may explain the difference between our system and their’s. The Federal government designed and built Washington’s Metro system with very expensive labor and cheap parts.
Who will pay for all this maintenance? You guessed it, the taxpayer! From the Post article,
Evans also said repeatedly that the District, Maryland and Virginia, as well as the federal government, need to contribute more money to support the system or see it deteriorate further.
He said the District, Maryland and Virginia should create a dedicated funding source, such as a regional sales tax, to provide an additional $1 billion a year to Metro for capital investment such as maintenance. The federal government should kick in $300 million a year for operations, he said.
