1 year since the 7000 series derailed and they are still not back in service.

Today marks the 1 years anniversary of the Blue line 7000 series train derailment and most are still are out of service

A safety investigation found that the new 7000 series railcar had an issue with its wheelsets, creating the possibility of derailment. This forced the transit agency to remove them from service. Due to this, frequencies were decreased and riders faced major delays. The report also revealed the amount of estimated damage due to the derailment was $715,000.

WMSC noted that the wheel migration issue on 7000-series trains remains under investigation.

WMATA needs the 7000 series back in service as they don't have enough railcars for the silver line extension to Dulles Aiport

https://wjla.com/news/local/metro-derai ... wmsc-wmata#

Wow…that is actually unbelievable, it weirdly feels like just a few months ago. It also coincided with when I stopped riding metro regularly.

WMATA needs to be asking to work this to closure daily with the safety people who need to work on it 100% also. You cannot run the system with half the cars as people return to the office in higher numbers at the Fed and summer travel ends and you need to expand Silver.

The GM's said something about needing to see data from the in track monitoring though all temperatures. That's nuts. Instruments have specifications for such things. Thermal expansion is easy to calculate. You don't have to do everything by empirical piles of paper.

The safety regulator should have some responsibility to make reasonable requests for safety. The safest thing is to never run a train after all.

Even with completely ignoring the issue the deaths per mile compared to other forms of transport was much less. People need to be rational. The safety culture at WMATA did/does need fixing but completely making it impossible to operate is not the solution. What if the only kind of car was 7000s? Shut it all down for a year no one has a subway? Get real people... Get it done.

@drwho9437
The biggest problem that has existed within WMATA sense Fort Totten wreck of 06 22 2009, is nobody will sign off on anything that has been reported to have been fixed. No one in the agency has the balls to say, "The Buck Stops Here" The primary reason why Metrorail has never returned to automatic operation is because there is no place where the buck stops at.

I see lots of discussion about WMATA's actions but zero about why the wheeltrucks are failing in the first place. Is this issue unique to WMATA trackage, or do other transit systems using the manufacturer's wheelsets also have the failures? What has the manufacturer done on the issue so far?

Hard to believe that testing has not identified the problem. Or is it someone has a false notion what the problem is and is neglecting to do complete indenpendent testing runs?