WMATA 7000 Series Pulled from Service

Washington DC – Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority – or WMATA has pulled all their Kawasaki-built 7000 series cars from service at 5 am today.

Following a major derailment on the Blue line that occurred on October 12th, the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission or WMSC instructed that all Kawasaki-built 7000 series cars were pulled from service for inspections.

According to the WMATA, these cars will be returned to service once they are cleared.

Since these cars make up more than 60% of the fleet, the WMATA had to perform the following service changes in order to maintain some type of regular service.

• Blue Line service reduced to a 24 minute frequency with 6 car trains
• Green Line service reduced to a 20 minute frequency with 6 car trains
• Orange Line service reduced to a 24 minute frequency with 6 car trains
• Red Line service reduced to a 12 minute frequency with 6 car trains
• Silver Line service reduced to a 24 minute frequency with 6 car trains
• Yellow Line service reduced to a 20 minute frequency with 6 car trains

These changes are in effect until further notice. WMATA Urges patrons to seek alternate service on Metrobus routes.

UPDATE 12/30/21:
Some 7000 series cars returned to service but were immediately pulled once more due to not quite clearing inspections. WMATA is encountering storage capacity issues with these non-running cars.

About the author: Dash

I have been with Virtual Transit Center since it's conception as the "Dash Forums" back in 2008. Since then, I have been writing and doing YouTube side by side, focusing both on Transportation and Gaming. Most of my knowledge comes from SEPTA as I lived in Philadelphia for most of my life. As of 2021, I am on YouTube as DashTransit, Dash5155, and TheDashOfficial.

As for the name DashTransit itself, it actually stems from my YouTube channel.

DashTransit was originally called "njt5329" and the channel was just clips of buses. Mostly SEPTA and NJT. A Fujifilm Finepix was used in this era.

Starting in July 2011, the Canon SX130IS camera became the camera of the channel, bringing HD documentary-style videos much like my buddy (trainman1971) did for DVD for many years past. This is when the channel became known as "Transit Action Series"

In May 2012, the original Canon SX130IS retired, and then all videos were recorded off a mobile phone until eventually uploaded proved too difficult due to hardships IRL

Starting in 2017, I used a Canon SX200IS from Bastranz to reboot the channel that otherwise was dead for a whole year prior.

Between April 19th, 2019, and January 21st, 2021, all videos were recorded by a Canon SX710 HS camera. The channel was renamed DashTransit 4/19/19.