Overnight rains caused major delays on Metro in Northern Virginia on Monday morning after flooding shut down a section of the Yellow and Blue lines.
Making matters worse, train service on Virginia Railway Express was also bogged down on the Fredericksburg line. The commuter service directed its riders onto the Metro system’s own messed up line. Riders were waiting at stations in long lines to get to work.
The problem for Metro was that water was above the rails in a small section of tunnel near Potomac Yards between National Airport and Braddock Road stations when service started for the morning, said Metro spokesman Dan Stessel.
By 6:20 a.m., Metro had set up shuttle bus service to ferry morning commuters between the two stations. A total of 29 shuttle buses were in service, he said, while crews pumped out the water from the tunnel.
As of about 9:10 a.m., the water level had dropped enough on one set of tracks to send trains through on a single track, he said. Then as of 9:30 a.m., service was restored to the second set of tracks. But riders were warned to expect residual delays along the lines.
