“If only it was a 20-minute delay,” said Lopez, whose 15- to 20-minute commute from Clarendon to Farragut West stretched to 45 minutes. and there is no track work supposedly until February.”īeatriz Lopez, 34, of Burke, Va., said the delays caused her to miss a 9:30 a.m. “I’m generally frustrated because, I mean, to me, the problems appear to be on the Orange Line and Blue Line. I saw myself longer than that,” said Fazli Erdem, 43, whose commute from McLean to King Street-Old Town station stretched an hour longer than usual. “The train was stopping, then they weren’t telling us what was going on, and when I was able to get, they kept mentioning a 20-minute delay. Although Metro has pledged to be more transparent and responsive to riders, complaints about its lack of communication with customers continues. Metro said service was fully restored by 11 a.m., but not before riders sounded off about the delays and the lack of information from Metro about what was happening. Other riders are easing into regular work schedules this week after holiday vacations. In preparation for Inauguration Day and anticipated winter weather, there will be no more SafeTrack maintenance surges until February. The problems meant at least 90 minutes of disruptions for riders, many of whom were back to their normal riding routines because of a lull in SafeTrack work. He said Metro reestablished the majority of connections within 10 minutes, but problems persisted throughout the day as some devices required reboots even after connections were restored. Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said the problem was detected immediately after maintenance and testing began at 9:22 a.m. The episode postponed scheduled track work and angered riders in what became the system’s first major service meltdown of 2017, a year when Metro has pledged to win back riders with a $400,000 “Back2Good” campaign. As a result, Metro had to dispatch workers to manually move the switches through the end of the morning rush. The glitch was a consequence of planned maintenance and testing, leaving the control center unable to communicate with the tracks it oversees, the agency said. Metro says a computer glitch struck at the height of the morning rush, stripping the Rail Operations Control Center of its ability to remotely move switches, where trains change tracks - leading to a ripple effect of delays and disruptions across the 117-mile subway. In a year when Metro says it will bring service “Back2Good,” Thursday morning brought riders back to reality - with systemwide slowdowns and sluggish communications that have become familiar to customers of the nation’s second-busiest subway.