WP story: Why Metro is so hard to maintain

WP did a story analyzing why, in its view, Metro is so hard to maintain based on design decisions made by its planners. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics ... intenance/

"JDC"
WP did a story analyzing why, in its view, Metro is so hard to maintain based on design decisions made by its planners. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics ... intenance/

This article has so many error in it it's not even funny.

The graphic showing crossovers and pocket tracks is missing 10 crossovers and locates 1 incorrectly.

The missing are, south and east of Fort Totten, south of Takoma, east of West Falls Church, east of Foggy Bottom, east of Cheverly, north of Pentagon City, East of McLean, East of Spring Hill and east of Beulah Road. The one east of Potomac Avenue should be east of Eastern Market.

There are no spurs from the mainline, they are leads, as in tracks that lead to yards and tracks that connect the Red line to the rest of the railroad.

Here is a map showing all of the interlockings in the system.

The graphic showing station construction type is missing one built in rock, there are no stations built using the New Austrian Tunneling Method.

Rosslyn is built in rock. Georgia Avenue Petworth is cut and cover, Columbia Heights is a hybrid, I was excavated from under a cut and cover concrete arch support by slurry walls. The water proofing described is not New Austrian Tunneling Method. New Austrian Tunneling Method is a way of boring tunnels through sedimentary soils without the use of boring shield or machine followed by prefabricated tunnel linings and or steel ribs with lagging and a poured in place concrete lining. The water proofing described was used in tunnels bored in rock and sedimentary soils and on tunnels and station built using cut and cover.

The tunnels between Columbia Heights and Fort Totten and the tunnels between Tysons Corner and Greensboro were excavated using the New Austrian Tunneling Method.

The Washington Post committed journalistic malpractice by not doing sufficient research in preparation of the article.

"Journalistic integrity" and "Washington Post" have unfortunately become mutually exclusive phrases.

From my perspective, the Bezos-era Post is an experiment in transforming a well-respected legacy paper in to a viable millennial-focused content aggregator. This generation isn't interested in hard hitting fact-based story telling but rather gossip and fodder for depthless happy hour conversation. Most of the stuff they print is just correct enough to sound like they know what they're talking about without having to actually spend money on pesky things like fact checking and copy editing.

"dcmike"
"Journalistic integrity" and "Washington Post" have unfortunately become mutually exclusive phrases.

From my perspective, the Bezos-era Post is an experiment in transforming a well-respected legacy paper in to a viable millennial-focused content aggregator. This generation isn't interested in hard hitting fact-based story telling but rather gossip and fodder for depthless happy hour conversation. Most of the stuff they print is just correct enough to sound like they know what they're talking about without having to actually spend money on pesky things like fact checking and copy editing.

The Washington Post published numerous errors in WMATA stories long before Mike Bezos purchased the paper from Katharine Graham.

For years, WaPo has been WMATA's pet parrot. They repeated anything the PR department said with none of their own research or content. If Dan Stessel said the red line crash in 2009 was caused by a customer in Vienna sneezing near a rail, WaPo would publish that as well established fact and call it a day. All the glaring problems for the last 20 years weer actively ignored. It's quite obvious there was some love going on between them to ensure nothing mean was ever said. It wasn't until the last 6 months that WaPa became unable to ignore it. And only because everyone else in the media is screaming about it, and the public knows about it. If WaPa ignored it or published all kinds of fake good news, people would realize it now. So as far as I'm concerned, WaPo should be considered the least credible source of information on issues surrounding WMATA.

As far as this article is concerned, no surprise. Making excuses for WMATA as if it's soooooooo complicated and difficult, so we should all be more understanding of their plight. The fact that it was all wrong and essentially a work of fiction just makes it even more pathetic. It's like someone read a few Wikipedia articles on rail tunnels and made up the rest.

It's only, like, 40 so years old, how could it really get that way!? New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago are understandable, but this only dates back to 76! Has BART been as hard to maintain!?

"jayo"
It's only, like, 40 so years old, how could it really get that way!? New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago are understandable, but this only dates back to 76! Has BART been as hard to maintain!?

It has allegedly become hard to maintain because a greater amount of interest has been placed on providing service then placing an equal amount of interest on doing routine preventive maintenance. The attitude for most of the last 25 years been build, build and build, not, build maintain what was built 5 years ago, build maintain what was built 5 years ago and build maintain what was built 5 years ago. During the first 20 years they had the time to do routine preventive maintenance and did a pretty job, thing started going down hill when that preventive maintenance time window was cut to provide more service.

jayo wrote: Has BART been as hard to maintain!?

From what I have seen, it has the same kinds of issues. Plus its own.
They were having some power issue that was roaching entire consists in certain areas.
They have track shutdowns.

Originally they has no END of signaling and control issues; see the Fremont Flyer https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8471/8143 ... a4ef_b.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;