If you’re heading to any Yellow line destinations this weekend, including National Airport, you should make alternate plans. Metro is shutting down the Yellow line rail bridge over the Potomac River this weekend to do track maintenance and conduct an annual bridge inspection. The closure begins tonight at 10 p.m. and lasts through Sunday at midnight. Directions from WMATA: When a Yellow Line train arrives at the King Street Metrorail station, passengers must transfer to…
Tomorrow morning marks the annual running of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. The race, which takes place on the National Mall, begins at 8 a.m., with several pre-race events as well. To accommodate the 50,000 people expected to participate, Metro will begin operating two hours early, at 5 a.m., with trains running every 12 minutes from the end of each line. Metro has not scheduled any track maintenance during the day on…
>> Four suspicious packages discovered near L’Enfant Plaza, which led to the closure of Independence Avenue between 7th and 12th streets and the evacuation of some buildings in southwest D.C. this morning, were determined to be non-threatening. [NBC4] >> D.C. firefighters were called to the scene of an apparent spill of a toxic industrial floor stripper inside a building in the 2400 block of 17th St. NW. The building was evacuated and about 50…
They have a saying in Paris that describes the fast pace of life in that city: Métro, boulot, dodo, meaning that life consists only of an endless repetition of subway rides, work, and sleep. Life in Washington is harried, too, but sometimes you need to stop as you dash through the L’Enfant Plaza station at rush hour on a Friday in January. Who is playing the famous Chaconne from Bach’s D minor partita so well…
For a while there, the folks at Metro were using the tagline, “Metro Opens Doors” to market all the transit services they offered. While that particular slogan seems to have fallen by the wayside, this afternoon gives us the opportunity to resurrect it, if slightly altered: Metro Opens Baseball Season. Baseball fans across the city will be ditching work early and heading over to RFK for the Washington Nationals’ home opener, at 1 p.m against…
If Alexandria officials are to be believed there has already been some impressive upside to their recruitment of the Patent and Trademark Office from the canyons of Crystal City to Carlyle, a neighborhood west of Old Town and north of the Capital Beltway. “We are now the intellectual capital of the world,” says Stephanie Landrum, acting executive director of Alexandria’s economic development office, according to the Washington Post. In addition to the over 7,000 employees…
Though we often sing the praises of public transit, there’s usually not anything fun about jumping on the Metro at rush hour to get to work. It’s crowded, people are surly, and you inevtitably engage in that awkward two-step dance to get around the one commuter that has decided they’re going to occupy the middle of the aisle, everyone else be damned. But now and then something breaks up the daily monotony of Metro commutes…
The Washington Post reports what some of you who’ve been out using Metro today may have already heard: six-car train on the Green Line derailed just before 4 p.m. this afternoon near the Mt. Vernon Square/Convention Center stop, injuring 20 people, one of those seriously. The Associated Press has more, describing the 45-minute wait approximately 60 people had before being reached by fire crews and helped out of the tunnel. This from AP:The accident happened…
Even if today becomes the commuter apocalypse being predicted, at least the heavens won’t open up and swallow you whole. After yesterday’s violent storms, D.C. can expect a balmy 63 degrees and partly-cloudy skies to ease you into the weekend. So roll up your sleeves and get ready for some fun. Freaky (Freight) Friday: Are you one of the thousands of people are stranded this morning due to the Thursday night derailment of a freight…
An alert tipster brings us news that WMATA officials are poised to consider whether some of the Metro systems shorter escalators should be converted into stairs. The proposal on the table would call for the decommissioning of 23 escalators in order to save approximately $1.2 million in maintenance costs. According to WTOP, none of the escalators in question exceed thirty feet in height and are all units that provide redundant service at their individual stations….