Officials at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) have raised serious concerns about the technological state of the Red Line, warning that major upgrades are urgently required to prevent significant reliability issues in the future.

Metro General Manager Randy Clarke emphasised that ‘‘if you get into major reliability problems years from now, that’s going to be more people stuck in tunnels; that’s going to be more trains not moving.’’

Clarke compared the ageing control system to an eight-track tape player being asked to stream today’s volumes, highlighting the scale of obsolescence.

Chief Infrastructure Officer Theresa Impastato added that many systems date back to 1973, and new staff must still be trained in the ‘‘old way’’ of operating equipment no longer taught in modern engineering courses.

The network is now in discussions about directing a dedicated share of the region’s sales-tax income toward such urgent upgrades.

Clarke noted that ‘‘to upgrade and modernise our rail system, it’s going to cost billions of dollars; there’s no question about that,’’ but said the agency hopes to identify ‘‘size pieces’’ such as a two-hundred-million-dollar per-year programme as a stepping stone.

This warning arrives as Metro funds its return to automatic train operation on the Red Line and broader signalling modernisation efforts.

While automation has been resumed system-wide, analysts say true resilience will depend on wholesale replacement of legacy hardware, automated control logic and institutional knowledge.

The message to stakeholders is clear: the Red Line’s reliability and safety depend on sustained investment now – the cost of delay could be far greater than the price of proactive renewal.