Photograph by krisetya on Flickr

Metro delays due to track maintenance are certainly a major headache and inconvenience for most commuters, but a recent report by NBC4 reveals that major structural damages to some stations could shut down parts of the Red Line for weeks.

Apparently, serious structural damage and maintenance to the Friendship Heights and Medical Center stations are causing lots of water to constantly seep in, making the conditions of the tunnel that much worse. “Water is just coming in from basically the geology that is there. The stations have a lot of fractures,” Metro Deputy General Manager Rob Troup told NBC4. “In a few weeks, it will be filled up with water and mud.”

In order to fix the problem, WMATA will have to re-line the tunnels, a process that could take up to “a month and a half,” a Metro source told NBC4. To do that, that means the Red Line between Friendship Heights and Medical Center would be shut down for weeks, leaving thousands of daily commuters forced to take shuttle busses between those stations.

While this may be true, we can all take a deep breath: It probably won’t happen for a long while. In an email to DCist, WMATA spokesperson Dan Stessel says that “nothing imminent” is planned for repairing those stations and that they’re “likely a year or more away.”

Here’s the official statement from WMATA:

Metro faces challenges along a portion of the Red Line near Medical Center Station, where constant water infiltration from outside the tunnel requires ongoing pumping, dredging and cleaning to keep switches in service and to prevent arcing insulators. While this is not a safety issue, Metro engineers are considering comprehensive long-term solutions to improve the reliability of the Red Line for years to come while reducing maintenance requirements. Any decision around the appropriate long-term repairs, including timeline and possible effects on service, will be made only after final engineering designs are submitted in the coming months.