Photo by Kristine Marsh

The shutdown dubbed Metromaggedon was just a small blip in comparison to the massive, year-long maintenance plan that General Manager Paul Wiedefeld laid out this morning.

The draft plan, pending board approval, is “massive,” Wiedefeld said. “We’re talking about it like a militarily operation.” The goal, however, was not to eliminate service entirely again. Instead he is proposing that Metro maintains a minimum level of service with single tracking, or at the very least, “bus bridges” around stations, as they do intense work on sections of the system.

Councilmember Jack Evans and chairman of the Metro board said there’s no doubt that “this is going to be inconvenient.” Indicating that the board would likely get behind Wiedefeld’s proposal, he said: “We have a crisis situation, these are the decisions we have to make.”

Metro says that the plan, called “SafeTrack,” would get three years of work done in one year.

Here are the essential details:

• Metro will largely be operating, even during periods of heavy maintenance. There will be fifteen “surges,” featuring extensive work—and extensive inconveniences, like continuous single tracking and early closures.
• The first surge: continuous single tracking from June 4-19, between Franconia and Van Dorn
• The most disruptive surge: Between NoMa and Fort Totten from October 9 to November 2, an area that sees 108,000 weekday trips.
• Five areas will see entire stations closed and replaced by “bus bridges” that take riders around the affected stations. That includes a period of a week (July 5-12) where Metro riders coming from the south will have to take a bus from Braddock Road to National Airport, and another week (July 12-19) when riders coming from D.C. will have to take a shuttle bus from Pentagon City to National Airport.
• Riders will still be paying peak fares, even when they are riding the rails during so-called surges. “We are still providing the base service,” Wiedefeld said of the decision.
• Extended weekend hours are going away. Starting the evening of June 3, Metro will close at midnight seven days a week. In other words, no more late-night weekend rides or extended hours due to sports games. Wiedefeld said it “is too early to call” if they will need to permanently end late-night weekend service when the year is up.
• It’s not clear exactly how much this will cost. Wiedefeld said that the figure isn’t in the billions, but declined to give an estimated cost. WMATA will likely use programming dollars from future budgets, debt, and save money from productivity to finance the effort.
• Evening track work will start earlier, at 8 p.m. Metro actually used to start work at that time, before they pushed it back to 10 p.m. and midnight.
• >The plan significantly accelerates the work. Metro estimates that a “surge” of around three weeks is equivalent to ten weekends of work. To get it done, though, they will need to call in contractors to enhance the regular workforce.
• The system will never be new again. Duh, but still Wiedefeld wants to remind riders that maintenance is a part of keeping a transit system safe. He wants to get Metro to a place where they are doing regular work, instead of rushing from crisis to crisis. That’s the goal after the year is up. “When we make the system safe. People will come back to us,” Evans predicted.

We’ll update this post with additional details.

Safe Track Plan