L’Enfant Plaza on January 20, 2009. (Photo by owash)
Metro will work its hardest days in four years starting this weekend, when it begins to cater to the hundreds of thousands of visitors pouring in for President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden’s second inauguration. The transit agency released its inauguration schedule earlier this afternoon.
Next Monday, Inauguration Day, Metrorail will open at 4 a.m. and operate at a rush hour schedule until 9 p.m., along with rush hour fares. However, the “Rush+” service will be suspended, but Yellow Line trains will still be cut short due to some inauguration events, mainly, the inaugural balls. As the Walter E. Washington Convention Center is set to host the Presidential Inaugural Committees two official parties, Yellow Line trains will run only between Huntington and Chinatown. The Mt. Vernon Square station will also be closed that day, with Green Line.
The Smithsonian station on the Blue and Orange lines and the Archives-Navy Memorial station on the Yellow and Green Lines be closed, too, Metro said. Metro is also recommending that the four stations closest to the U.S. Capitol—Judiciary Union Station, Capitol South and Federal Center SW—be used only by riders with tickets to the swearing-in that morning.
Meanwhile, with inauguration events causing the closure of many downtown roadways next Monday, several bus routes will be truncated and will instead turn around before entering the affected areas. (Check the map in the document below.) Buses will otherwise operate on a normal weekday schedule, with additional runs for people going home after the swearing in and parade.
For the weekend before inauguration, Metro will not be performing any track work anywhere on its rail system. Barring the closure of one entrance at Judiciary Square on Sunday evening, all lines will run on Saturday and Sunday schedules.
And though it won’t be as frenzied as four years ago, when Metro set its single-day ridership record with 1.1 million rail trips and 423,000 bus rides, it is still expected to be very crowded, with authorities estimating between 600,000 and 800,000 packing onto the National Mall to watch Obama and Biden take their oaths of office. The transit agency, therefore, is advising people to avoid having to transfer rail lines if possible, and is prohibiting riders from bringing bicycles, coolers and large containers on board during the three-day weekend.
