By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON -A U.S. congressional panel, calling Washington’s rail and bus network essential to the functioning of the federal government, holds a hearing on Wednesday in the face of an October train derailment and other challenges.
Last month, the subway system that serves the District of Columbia and parts of Virginia and Maryland said it planned to delay for another 90 days the return of trains like the one that derailed.
None of the 187 passengers was injured but National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy said the incident could have been “catastrophic.”
The Washington Metrorail Safety commission in October ordered the system known formally as the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) to indefinitely remove about 60% of its rail cars following inspections after the derailment.
The NTSB has said the system had been aware of wheel assembly issues since 2017. In December, a group of U.S. senators also asked WMATA about the issue.
The Washington Post reported Metro had said earlier that it first detected a problem in 2017, but that it initially appeared to be limited in scope and Metro was working with the railcar’s manufacturer on the issue.
Testifying before the House of Representatives Oversight Subcommittee on Government Operations will be WMATA general manager Paul Wiedefeld, board chair Paul Smedberg and David Mayer, CEO of the Metro safety commission.
The subcommittee said WMATA is an “essential component of transit for the functioning of the federal government.”
Congress provides substantial funding for the heavy rail transit system, the country’s third largest, and for the bus network, the sixth largest.
In 2019, prior to the pandemic, WMATA’s total ridership reached nearly 300 million trips per year with an average weekday Metrorail ridership of 626,000. WMATA said in January service was averaging below 200,000 rail trips daily – less than a third of pre-pandemic demand.
(Reporting by David Shepardson, Editing by Franklin Paul and Howard Goller)
