See my earlier colloquy with kristann about the 1996 incident at Shady Grove - the Deputy GM insisted that they be on automatic operation and it ended up killing a train operator whose train skidded through the automatic “stop” and struck another train.
Trains were massively backed up today on the Red Line because a Shady Grove bound train got stuck before Tenleytown around 4 pm. I’d wager money on that triggering a chain of events that led to today’s accident. We’ll see.
You are probably on the right path on that. It seems that once something goes wrong in the system, it affects everything.
I am not so sure that Metro management is the best it can be. To me, it seems that the problems are more prevalent lately.