With a three-day holiday weekend approaching next month, Metro riders can expect another weekend of train delays.
Red Line riders will be affected this time. The transit agency said Monday it is planning major track work at the Grosvenor-Strathmore station over the three-day Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.
That means no trains will be going in or out of that station. Riders will need to take free shuttle buses around the closed station and tack an estimated 40 minutes on to their travel times.
Ahead: Red Line delays
» WHERE: The Grosvenor-Strathmore Metrorail station will be closed over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend.
» WHEN: 10 p.m. Friday, Jan. 15, until 5 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 19.
» HOW: Riders passing through that area should add another 40 minutes to their travel plans. The transit agency will run free shuttles between White Flint and Medical Center stations. Or riders can take the J2 Metrobus from the Medical Center stop.
The work entails replacing 1,400 feet of rail, 310 railroad ties and 300 track fasteners, plus fixing more than 60 water leaks, concentrated near the area where the train goes underground. “There’s a lot of wear and tear over the last 25 years in that area,” said Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel.
It’s the latest major overhaul Metro is conducting over a holiday weekend.
Metro raised hackles among riders, congressional leaders and its own board members when it shut down service for the Labor Day weekend to three stops, including the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport station, on the Blue and Yellow lines.
The agency then shut down the Green Line at L’Enfant Plaza, Waterfront-SEU and Archives/Navy Memorial stops for Columbus Day weekend.
Metro is relying on such three-day weekends to undertake longer projects it couldn’t finish within a two-day weekend. The idea is that fewer riders use the trains then and the work can be accomplished faster in one weekend than drawn out over weeknights and regular weekends. The agency is not planning any major work for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, which fall on Fridays to create back-to-back three-day weekends.
The MLK weekend is expected to be less painful than the past holiday weekends as it involves only one stop on one line, albeit the busiest line in the system, Taubenkibel said.
“In terms of service, this will be a lot easier on us,” he said.
In 2009, ridership numbers boomed on the MLK Birthday weekend as it coincided with Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration. But in the more typical 2008, the agency ran 257,599 trips on the rail system on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Taubenkibel said. Typical weekdays have ridership well over 700,000 trips.
