By Alan Sipress and Alice Reid
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, January 16, 1999; Page B1

Power outages caused by yesterday's ice storm repeatedly knocked out service on Metro's Red Line, disrupting both the morning and evening commutes for tens of thousands of riders who use the regional subway system's busiest route.

During the worst breakdown of Metro service in nearly three years, electricity shortages bedeviled both ends of the U-shaped Red Line. Track signals failed; escalators and elevators stalled; and water pumps in the tunnels came to a stop, leaving rails to submerge slowly below a constant trickle of water.

With the approach of the evening rush hour, the Red Line sank into chaos as Metro was forced to cut rail service to the nine stations north of the Van Ness-UDC station shortly after 3 p.m., because the backup power system providing electricity to stations along the line had gone out.

Metro officials said the emergency battery system, which had been activated when trains began running at 5:30 a.m. in response to the loss of electricity from Potomac Electric Power Co. is typically capable of operating at full capacity for only eight hours.

Power was finally restored to the Red Line by 6:45 p.m., and trains had resumed normal operations at all stations, officials said.

Earlier, outbound commuters, who have come to count on Metro's reliability even when harsh weather makes road travel impossible, were forced from the trains at Van Ness-UDC, elbowing their way onto escalators so crowded that some people chose to jog up the down escalator. At street level, commuters surged onto emergency Metro shuttle buses so packed that their doors barely closed. Other riders scrambled to hail cabs.

"You could say I'm irritated," said Anne Asher, 63, of Bethesda after waiting about 20 minutes for a shuttle bus outside the Van Ness-UDC station. "If I was running the world, it would be run better. I thought they should get a better power supply."

Andrew Guthrie, 61, of Reston, was headed to Friendship Heights on the Red Line to pick up some contact lenses yesterday afternoon when he heard announcements directing all passengers to get off at Van Ness-UDC and to switch to buses that would take riders to nine Metro stops farther up the line in the District and Montgomery County.

"That's not nearly enough to handle the number of people pouring out of the station," he said.

Metro spokeswoman Cheryl Johnson said the shuttle operation was difficult to initiate because buses had to be pulled from other routes and drivers reassigned. As Metro's operating chiefs battled to keep the Red Line running, they huddled in a fifth-floor command center at the transit agency's downtown headquarters, linked by telephone to the system's basement control room and to supervisors throughout the system.

Metro officials said the ice storm was the most disruptive in the system's 23-year history because of its effect on Pepco service in Montgomery County, where nearly half the Red Line stations are located.

Heating devices on switches and the system's third rail – which supplies electricity to the tracks – had kept ice at bay all Thursday night. But by early yesterday, Pepco power failures in the Rockville and Silver Spring areas had closed four Red Line stations and the Shady Grove rail yard.

The power outage at Shady Grove, where trains are parked overnight, forced Metro workers to use diesel locomotives to pull trains out to the main tracks, where service limped along between Rockville and Twinbrook until 8 a.m. Then a tree fell across both the inbound and outbound tracks just north of Twinbrook, curtailing service for half an hour until crews could remove it.

The Friendship Heights station lost electricity, leaving hundreds of commuters to walk down escalators to the mezzanine, where they confronted inoperable fare gates and Farecard machines.

The loss of power also knocked out communications cables essential to track signals and switches. Trains were directed around some faulty signals, reducing their speed at times to 10 mph.

Staff writer Allan Lengel contributed to this report.