Photo by T.D. Ford (Grundlepuck).

There will be around a million people traveling out of the Washington region for the Thanksgiving holiday. But if you thought you were being all clever by skipping the rush by checking out early this weekend via National Airport, well, here’s hoping you weren’t planning on taking Metro to get to your flight.

The region’s transit authority will not offer Metrorail service between the King Street and Pentagon City stations on the Blue and Yellow Lines. All three stations in between — Crystal City, National Airport and Braddock Road — will be closed. WMATA will operated several “express” bus routes to shuttle passengers around “critical maintenance work.” (In addition to the work around the airport, Metro will also be single-tracking between Dupont Circle and Judiciary Square on the Red Line, between Stadium-Armory and Addison Road on the Blue Line, and between Ballston and East Falls Church on the Orange Line this weekend; also, the Metrorail system will open an hour early, at 6 a.m., on Saturday.)

Metro says the weekend before Thanksgiving Day is “historically…is not an especially busy weekend for Metrorail ridership at Reagan National,” but there’s obviously going to be some people who are going to be less than pleased that they’ll be calling a cab (or chancing it on a shuttle bus) to get to the only Metro-accessible airport in town.

The major track work is slated to begin at 10 p.m. this evening.