Now just imagine they’re all Capitals, Nationals or Phillies fans. Oy. (Photo by Caroline Angelo)Saturday is tooling up to be one of the most exciting days so far this year for D.C.’s sports teams. At the Verizon Center, the Capitals and New York Rangers will drop the puck on the fourth game of their Eastern Conference semifinal series at 12:35 p.m. Half an hour later, in Navy Yard, Nationals Park will play host to truckloads of bloated, foulmouthed Philadelphians as the Phillies continue their first D.C. trip of the year.
It’s all making for an exciting weekend. Chances to shame New York and Philadelphia on the field of sport rarely come at the same time.
But you know what else is scheduled to happen this weekend? Metrorail track work, of course, and a whole bunch of it, too. And this weekend, crews are slated to hit the Red, Green and Yellow lines, also known as the tracks that take red-and-white-clad fans to either the Verizon Center or Nationals Park.
The Green Line will be closed from Greenbelt to West Hyattsville, with replacement shuttle buses expected to add 50 minutes to riders’ journeys. Yellow Line trains will run only as far north as Mt. Vernon Square. And the Red Line will operate along a single track between Forest Glen and Takoma and also between Van Ness and Dupont Circle, with trains running only once every 24 minutes throughout the weekend.
On an ordinary weekend, this would be irksome enough. But toss on tens of thousands of rabid Nationals and Capitals fans (as well as, sigh, drink-sodden Phillies fans), and you can’t blame some for fearing a first-class clusterfuck.
To that end, a Metro riders’ group is asking the transit agency to ease up on the track work this weekend. The Action Committee for Transit, a Montgomery County group, sent a letter last night to Metro General Manager Richard Sarles, pleading with him to postpone the track work:
Dear Mr. Sarles:
The Action Committee for Transit is deeply concerned about Metrorail’s plans for station closures and single-tracking this weekend. A high-profile baseball series and hockey playoffs, on a weekend when many tourists are in Washington, will create a high demand for transit service. With trains running only once every 24 minutes on most of the Red Line, and four stations shut on the Green Line, the system will not be able to meet the need for its services.
We ask that you postpone this weekend’s scheduled maintenance. No transportation agency in this area would inconvenience drivers in a similar way for non-emergency maintenance. Even with the current stretched budgets, highway departments go to great expense to minimize traffic delays during construction. Transit riders deserve the same consideration.
Sincerely,
Tina Slater, President
Action Committee for Transit
But so far, the riders’ advocacy group should still brace itself for an overcrowded weekend on the trains, a Metro spokesman told DCist. The agency isn’t planning on upending its work schedule for an exciting sports weekend, especially so soon after it took a monthlong break for the National Cherry Blossom Festival.
“As of right now we have no plans to postpone any of the weekend’s track work because it’s essential to keeping our rebuilding efforts on schedule,” said Philip Stewart, the spokesman.
Stewart’s boss, Metro communications director Dan Stessel, said this weekend’s intersection of playoff hockey, division-rivalry baseball and track maintenance is just one of those nagging realities of life.
“There are major events just about every weekend,” Stessel wrote in an email. “Unfortunately, these projects are planned months in advance and are [on a] critical path, meaning rescheduling one weekend has an impact on future weekends. There would also be a significant expense associated with canceling work.”
The scheduled work on the Green Line, Stessel said, needs to be completed ahead of the Memorial Day weekend, when Metro will need all three days to complete its installation of new “Guarded #8” switches. “And we are talking about an NTSB recommendation here.”
