Orange Line Breaks AGAIN

A freaking "vacuum truck" on the Orange Line of the Metro derailed early this morning while on "overnight track work" near the Court House station in Virginia. This caused major delays, and everyone was late to work, but at least they had plenty of free time to Twitter about how terrible the Metro is.

The derailment was fixed at 1:46 this afternoon. Ten minutes later, the vacuum truck derailed again. Is Jesus trying to tell us something?

Metro officials currently have this alert up: "Disruption at East Falls Church. Orange Line trains are sharing the same track between East Falls Church and West Falls Church stations due to emergency track work. Expect delays in both directions. Expected duration up to 2 hours."

This is Metro Code to Virginia-to-D.C. commuters for, "Virginia is dead to you now." It is recommended that Virginia residents have long, long happy hours tonight, during which time they can celebrate the Death of Smoking.

Why all the problems today, and why are they coming before each rush hour? Also: why is stuff DERAILING?

Obviously this is a case of Viral Marketing.

Yesterday, Metro announced that it expected to receive $230 million in Obama Money from the stimulus package. Of course, they wanted more, but who doesn't? This is going to mean lots and lots of repairs, developments, improvements, which for most commuters translates into "years of regular, painful delays."

So it's crucial that before commencing with their "shovel-ready projects," Metro officials break everything for a few weeks -- "Oh look, a vacuum truck destroyed everything twice in one day, huh" -- to convince commuters that capital improvements really, really need to happen. Because nothing is more frustrating than a delay.

Jim Newell writes about vacuum trucks for Wonkette and IvyGate.