Surge #5 (Courtesy of WMTA)

SafeTrack and its array of inconveniences returns to the western portion of the Orange and Silver lines tomorrow, affecting the same stretch of track as the first round of work. However, Metro’s fifth surge—a third of the way through the yearlong extended maintenance plan—comes as work scheduled for Surge 3 still remains to be completed.

Surge 5 will entail continuous single tracking between Vienna and Ballston, with trains operating every 18 minutes, from July 20 – 31. More Orange line trains will come into service between Ballston and New Carrollton, but all Silver Line trains will have 18 minute headways. After 10 p.m., they will operate every 20 minutes.

In other words, as Metro puts it, “trains from Vienna-Ballston and Wiehle-Ballston are likely to be extremely crowded.” During the first surge, many commuters switched up their routines—coming in earlier, starting at Ballston, taking alternative transportation, etc.—but the system was largely at capacity, General Manager Paul Wiedefeld said at the time.

Meanwhile, Surge 3 ended on July 11 with tasks still remaining in several categories. High temperatures slowed work, as crews needed to take more breaks (a worker during the first surge was treated for dehydration) and it look longer than expected to replace more than 1,300 crossties, according to a Metro progress report. The report notes, though, that it would have taken 260 nights to do the crossties alone without the round-the-clock work.

(Courtesy of WMATA)

Metro also announced today that they will make data about real-time train locations available to developers so they can build better apps and tracking websites. “We heard loud and clear from our riders that being able to easily find accurate, real-time information was important to customers during their commute,” Wiedefeld said in a release. The data can be found at developer.wmata.com.