Metro says it’s still working to identify what caused a part on a railcar to come loose, leading to a fire starting under the train and smoke filling up the Eastern Market station last month.
“Usually, probable causes of incidents are identified in the first few hours after an incident,” Jayme Johnson, WMATA senior vice president of safety, said Thursday during a presentation to the transit agency’s board of directors. “Despite an extensive and rigorous diagnostic set of activities on many fronts across many departments in infrastructure, operations and safety and readiness, the probable cause of this incident has not yet been identified.”
It happened on a 7000-series Silver Line train as it pulled into Eastern Market. The station had to be evacuated and was closed for hours while D.C. firefighters ventilated it.
The part at the center of the problem was the collector shoe that connects to and draws power from the electrified third rail. Shushil Ramnaress, WMATA vice president and chief mechanical officer, said the shoes are actually built to fall off smoothly when they hit something.
“The collector shoes are designed to be sacrificial so that they break off without causing failure or damage to the railcar and the vehicle,” Ramnaress said. “While the breaking off is undesirable, it does demonstrate that the shoes work as designed and as intended and does not automatically equate to a safety incident.”
According to Ramnaress, the incident at the Eastern Market station appears to be isolated, but Metro is taking additional safety measures while it investigates what dislodged the shoe and the assembly that connects it with the railcar.
“We are taking any incident seriously at this point due to the absence of a root cause,” Ramnaress said.
The Eastern Market incident comes as riders continue to come back to Metro post-pandemic. WMATA General Manager and CEO Randy Clarke noted ridership in February was up 21% from February of last year, and combined weekend ridership is back to pre-pandemic levels.
Clarke said with Metro halting all construction work for five weeks starting on March 18, he hopes people will use Metrorail and buses to see the cherry blossoms on D.C.’s Tidal Basin when they hit peak bloom. Last year, drivers reported being stuck at Hains Point for hours on the weekend after the blossoms hit peak bloom.
“We are going to be running great service for this entire period,” Clarke said. “No one should take a car anywhere near the cherry blossoms.”
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