Metro has extra train service planned for the Nationals Sunday home opener this month, but riding the rail system to the weekday, night games could be painful.
The transit agency expects the number of riders on the Green Line, which serves the Navy Yard station near the ballpark, to more than triple on game days. But Metro can’t add more cars to that section of the system during the week because all of its 820 railcars are committed to rush hour service, officials said.
Nationals night games are scheduled to begin at 7:10 p.m.
District and Nationals officials are banking heavily on fans using Metro to get to the 41,000-seat stadium. Officials last week estimated more than half of the crowd — or more than 20,000 people — will take Metro to the games.
The Green Line’s 20 six- and eight-car trains currently serve about 6,000 riders in the direction of the stadium during rush hour, Metro rail chief Jim Hughes said.
“It’s going to be a learning experience all over again,” Hughes said. “We handled it [at RFK] and we’ve learned things. For instance the key thing is to fill up the trains when they come in, so we might hold them on the platform for 90 seconds instead of getting them in and out as fast as we can.”
Metro estimates 10 to 20, more people will crowd on each railcar on the way to games, giving the agency the capability of carrying an extra 10,000 to 12,000 people an hour, spokesman Steven Taubenkibel said.
Hughes said Metro moved upwards of 20,000 people to RFK stadium on the Blue and Orange lines for sold-out games during the Nationals 2005 opening season.
“The first couple of weeks were problematic,” he said. “We were learning, they were learning. There was a feeling-out period, so we’re going to go through that again.”
Hughes said fans would also learn to stagger their departure times after the games so that not everyone will reach the 15,000-an-hour capacity Navy Yard station at once.
