Nearly 700 Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority administrative employees — office workers, managers, and other non-operations staff — will be out at all Metrorail stations during the afternoon commute Thursday, June 29, to personally thank customers for their support and continued ridership during SafeTrack. The employees will hand out thank you notes that include a small token of appreciation offered by a Metro partner.
“We know that SafeTrack was an unprecedented burden on so many of our rail customers, and this is a way for us to get out there and say thanks,” said Metro General Manager and CEO Paul J. Wiedefeld.
Metro has seen early signs that ridership may be recovering post-SafeTrack. Yesterday, for example, was the highest weekday ridership of 2017 to date, with nearly 700,000 trips taken.
SafeTrack ended on Sunday, June 25. The program, which included 16 around-the-clock “surges,” resulted in three years of track work being completed in just over one year, reducing the number of defective rail ties on the system from 22 percent to only 2 percent.