While many riders often gripe about late trains and long waits (myself included), their thoughts are only anecdotal and provide just a small snapshot in time. Therefore, I recorded some actual data to assess Metrorail performance.

Photo by Daniel Lobo on Flickr.

On the Red Line, Metro has scheduled 20 trains to pass through that point per hour at this peak time. I recently began recording train arrivals at two Red Line stations, Farragut North and Van Ness-UDC, headed toward Glenmont for an hour during the morning rush.

Farragut North. Click for the entire chart.

These graphics show of the arrival times for trains, which I tracked using the WMATA trip planner and real time arrivals page.

Over the course of 19 distinct days of observations, the data shows that Metro actually got 20 trains per hour through the tunnel three times. Sometimes the number was only 14 or 15.

Van Ness. Click for the entire chart.

There have also been few eight-car trains recently. During that time, Metro stopped having many eight-car trains because the 4000 series had to be pulled out of service, but Metro said eight-car trains would remain during the middle of the week. However, many days show no eight-car trains or at most one.

Metro’s scorecard discusses this problem

On its website, Metro provides statistics about reliability and punctuality. This graph shows how on-time performance (OTP) dropped below the target level in the first quarter of 2015, particularly in February, when there were several cracked rails during very cold weather.

Graph from WMATA.

The scorecard also explains one possible reason for the longer waits between trains in 2015’s first quarter:

The service requirement of 954 cars was met only four of 19 weekdays in February. With an insufficient number of trains to depart from end-of-line stations, the time between departures (headways) increased, reducing OTP and lengthening waits for customers.

In other words, not all of the railcars were available which Metro’s service plan calls for. It’s possible the same thing has happened this quarter, which could explain the lack of eight-car trains and is also one reason Metro wants to cut service on all lines except Red and Blue.

The report does say that “OTP improved in March, most notably on the Red Line at 92.1 percent with only four rush periods experiencing less than 85 percent OTP.”

My figures show much lower adherence to the schedule. This discrepancy comes largely from the way WMATA calculates on-time performance. WMATA’s metric just looks at the wait between each pair of trains, or the headway, and how it compares to the schedule.

When there are 20 trains scheduled during rush hour, that comes out to three minutes between trains; Metro considers a train on time if it arrives up to five minutes after the previous train. That means there could be just 14 or 15 (or theoretically as few as 12) trains per hour and still all, or almost all, count as on time.

Travis Maiers spent most of his life in South Florida before moving to the Washington region in 2009. He has a degree in International Studies from American University and works at a DC non-profit focused on international economic policy. He currently resides in the Forest Hills neighborhood of DC and enjoys learning about all things related to transportation and urban planning.