It’s been three months since trains rolled through six Blue and Yellow Line stations south of National Airport. About 17,000 daily riders had to find alternatives all summer, some choosing to drive, bike, take a water taxi or shuttle bus—potentially adding 30 minutes to their commutes.

Now, the Huntington, Franconia-Springfield, Van Dorn Street, Eisenhower Avenue, King Street-Old Town, and Braddock Road stations are back open.

Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld said he knows it’s been a long summer for both customers and businesses, but he’s confident riders will come back and take Metro eventually.

“The biggest thing that people want time and time, again, is reliability. And as long as you are reliable, they will come,” Wiedefeld said while at the Braddock Road station on Monday.

He said the system is reliably on-time about 90 percent of the time. Since the end of the government shutdown in January, rail ridership is up about 3 percent compared to the same time last year.

“It’ll take months [to get back to pre-shutdown ridership],” Wiedefeld said. “When we did the [SafeTrack] safety surges, it did take a little bit of time.

The multiple SafeTrack shutdowns lasted seven to 31 days, from June 2016 to June 2017. Peak commuting ridership came back after about three months, but many off-hours and weekend riders never did.

This shutdown started on May 25 and lasted 107 days, leaving many riders to find new routines to get around. It’ll take a few months to see if they return, so Metro and localities in Virginia are launching campaigns to get riders back to the system. Metro had donuts and tote bags at stations on Monday. Alexandria’s tourism arm is promoting weeklong deals at restaurants and museums when you show a SmarTrip card.

The Work Isn’t Over Yet

Metro says the Blue and Yellow Line rehabilitation was the largest and most complex capital project since Metro first opened. It crammed three years of occasional work into a three-month continuous shutdown to replace crumbling concrete on the platform and add new amenities. Metro said the round-the-clock work schedule would be less painful for riders in the long run.

Stations opened a week later than initially planned. They were set to open around Labor Day, but Metro found some complications before the project began that stretched out the timeline.

Some work is still ongoing. Most stations still have some finishing touches to wrap up, like tile work in the mezzanines, calibrating train arrival screens, and replacing the wrong font on some signs.

Trains will run on a regular schedule, but at end-of-line stations, riders will both exit and board trains on the same side of the platform as more work gets done. That doesn’t affect train schedules, Wiedefeld said.

Huntington’s north entrance will not have fare vending machines for about three weeks, but staff will be on hand until 12:30 on weekdays to help commuters reload cards. At other times, customers can load their cards online or access machines on the south side of the station. The walkway between the Huntington North garage and Huntington 3 (middle) garage will also remain closed.

Kiss & Ride lots being used as construction staging areas will remain closed and bus stops will remain in temporary locations into the fall at Braddock Road, Eisenhower Avenue, Huntington North, King Street, and Van Dorn Street stations.

New features include slip-resistant tiles, new screens, new shelters with charging outlets and brighter LED canopy lighting, and lighted handrails on stairs. The six platforms also have new surveillance systems and safety call buttons to contact station managers

Next summer, Metro will do similar work on the Orange Line stations at Vienna, Dunn Loring, West Falls Church, and East Falls Church in Virginia and the Green Line stations at Greenbelt, College Park, Prince George’s Plaza, and West Hyattsville stations. More info on those shutdowns is expected to be released in the next two months.

This story originally appeared on WAMU.

Previously:
Metro’s New Stations Will Reopen With The Wrong Font, For Now
Turns Out, Metro’s Contractors Got The Font Wrong At Rebuilt Station
Metro Is On Track To Reopen Six Stations Next Month