Washington Monument

Mission Accomplished? Metro Set to Declare SafeTrack a Success

As an entire year of SafeTrack repairs on Washington, D.C.'s Metro system concludes, the transit agency is ready to declare the program a success.

Maintenance work disrupted service from morning until midnight for a year so crews could replace rails, including rotting wood throughout the system.

Metro says it replaced so many wood ties, they could be stacked as high as the Washington Monument -- twice.

Metro says the number of delays, disruptions and track fires are down. The closures have allowed workers to do three years of badly needed maintenance in just one year, officials say.

But are riders sold?

"The delays are the same. There's always an issue like every other day," rider Callie Johnson said. "I walked down here and I'm like, 'Is it going to be 10 minutes, or is it going to be two minutes?' There's no real consistency, still."

Rider Kristal DeKleer said she was hoping for a safer journey.

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"I will call Safetrack a success if we all can get around safer," she said.

Riding the train with News4's Adam Tuss in October, Bowser said she still had questions about SafeTrack.

"I think that we don't know enough about it," she said. "I think the metrics should be easy to understand and digest for decision makers."

Metro said the need for another series of SafeTrack repairs can be prevented -- as long as enough time for maintenance is allowed.

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