Final update, Friday, 8 p.m.: Emergency repairs necessitated by Monday’s train-auto incident and derailment have been wrapped up on the Metro Blue Line. Trains are now running regular service between Compton and Willowbrook/Rosa Parks Station.
Repairs to the damaged overhead power supply system near Compton Station continues on Wednesday afternoon. Metro is hoping to restore train service by Friday evening and we will provide an update if the timeline changes. Currently, crews have completed repairs to the damaged catenary pole, and we are on track for operations safety testing Friday morning.
While repair work is ongoing, Blue Line trains will run every 12 to 15 minutes, with bus shuttles replacing train service between Willowbrook/Rosa Parks Station and Compton Station. Buses will run approximately every 10 minutes.
Many people will wonder why the repairs are taking so long. Here’s what happened: at about 7:30 a.m. on Monday, a Blue Line train hit a car that drove around the crossing gates. That caused the train to derail and that resulted in extensive damage to multiple components, including the tracks, overhead power supply system and the signals system.
Because of the different systems impacted, some repairs cannot begin until others are completed first. Crews must pour a new concrete foundation for a new overhead wire pole. Once the concrete is cured, the pole will be installed and the rest of the wires and signal systems fixed. This entire process can take up to 24 hours. After new equipment is installed, testing must also be done to ensure trains can run safely through the area before we can restore regular service.
Again, we would like to thank our customers for their patience and understanding as we work to restore service as soon as possible. Please continue to follow us here at the Source or on Twitter @metrolosangeles or @metrolaalerts for status updates.
Categories: Service Alerts
If the metro was a privately owned company these damages would have been fix a day or two ago. If it isn’t fix by Monday I’m calling ACLU and damn an investigation as to why you guys are wasting taxpayers money and taking long to fix the metro.
You should actually be talking to your elected official serving on the Metro Board first before thinking about a lawsuit to be brought forth by the ACLU which only drains valuable donation resources that can be used elsewhere like a police brutality case or something.
That’s why politicians serve as Metro Board to oversee the government bureaucracy that is Metro and why ever person in LA County has at least one representative on the Metro Board (one of the five LAC BoS).
. . . Or it would have been abandoned, or it might have been jury-rigged as quickly and cheaply as possible, in a way that all but guaranteed that it would have eventually failed again, sooner rather than later, just from ordinary use, and then left in that state until it failed again, and then jury-rigged again, . . . .
I used to work part-time for an ice rink. And I know all about jury-rigging being left in place permanently. When that rink was torn down a few years ago, it probably had a dozen or more “temporary” pipe clamps under the ice, from where the ice resurfacer had dug up and cut into the glycol pipes that kept the ice frozen.
And of course, the class I freight railroads would much rather maintain their tracks to a standard that’s just barely good enough for drag freights, than go to the expense of maintaining them to passenger train standards. (Not to mention that it took an Act of Congress [back in 1893] to get them to adopt Eli Janney’s automatic coupler and George Westinghouse’s air brakes, and it’s taking several more Acts of Congress to get them to adopt PTC.) And then there are the airlines that would rather risk another whole engine nacelle falling off in flight, or even another in-flight break-up, than go to the expense of doing maintenance the right way. Or Morton Thiokol signing off on shuttle launches under conditions they knew damn well were explosions waiting to happen, until the Challenger disaster.
There are no updates as of today, 11/26. Are the repairs completed?
Hi Victor,
The post reflects the latest update.
Anna Chen
Writer, The Source
Mmm, maybe install four quadrant gates? Just a suggestion.
Henry Huntington must be laughing from his grave. Another example of the slow ineffencient operating SOP at the MTA.
TOOK OUT A POLE?!?!?
This sounds like a contender for the worst thing that’s ever happened on the Blue Line since its inception. (I’m not calling an “accident,” because somebody deliberately driving around lowered gates to play chicken with a train is NOT an accident.)