Rush Plus user’s guide: New Metro service begins June 18

In touting its new Rush Plus system, Metro says many crowded stations will see more trains, and the only station that will see fewer trains is the one serving a cemetery. This is true, but it hasn’t mollified commuters who worry that a plus for others will be a minus for them.

Concerns are most common among Blue Line riders. The disappearing trains belong to them. But the service changes, the biggest since the rail system was completed, also has created some anxiety among the many thousands of riders who use stations along the Orange, Yellow and Green lines.

Graphic

Starting June 18, Metrorail will be running differently during rush hour. Its new Rush Plus strategy will add more trains to the Orange and Yellow Lines to alleviate passenger crowding, but decrease the number of trains running on the Blue Line.

Resources for your commute

Metro maps the Silver Line

Metro is updating its current map to incorporate the Silver Line. Which map do you like best?

Follow Dr. Gridlock on Twitter

Get the latest news that will affect your commute.

Read more from Dr. Gridlock

The blog is your transportation guide to the Beltway and beyond.

More transportation news

There are two major motives behind Rush Plus: Clear some room in the Rosslyn tunnel for the eventual arrival of Silver Line trains, and relieve crowding. In brochures, public announcements and newspaper ads, Metro says the overall effect will be to improve service for about 110,000 riders.

Metro’s customers don’t care about the overall effect. All they know is that the transit authority is messing with their rides. So let’s go beyond the brochures and look at how the changes will affect each line on June 18.

(And in the coming days, look for more Rush Plus information on the Web at www.washingtonpost.com and on your mobile device at mobile.washingtonpost.com.)

Blue Line

There will be bigger gaps between Blue Line trains. Metro will withdraw some trains from the traffic jam at the Rosslyn tunnel by eliminating every third Blue Line train on the route between Franconia-Springfield in Virginia and Largo Town Center in Maryland.

This Monday morning, Blue Line trains are scheduled to arrive as usual to King Street station at 6:34, 6:40, 6:46. When Rush Plus begins the following Monday, they’re scheduled to arrive at 6:39, 6:45 and 6:57.

If you reach the platform just as the doors are closing on that 6:45 train, you won’t see another Blue Line train for 12 minutes because of the missing train.

This new gap at the Virginia stations is what worries Blue Line riders most, especially if their destinations are Rosslyn, via Arlington Cemetery, and on through the tunnel under the Potomac River to the west side of the District. But Metro also is adding trains to the Yellow Line, which serves some of those same Blue Linestations in Virginia before crossing the Potomac to L’Enfant Plaza. This should ease some of that angst among Blue Line riders, add service in the middle of the District, and make the whole ride more confusing.

Yellow Line

Metro is creating a new version of the Yellow Line to run between Franconia-Springfield and Greenbelt. Franconia-Springfield is normally a terminal for the Blue Line only and Greenbelt is normally a terminal for the Green Line only. The regular rush-hour service on the Yellow Line between Huntington and Mount Vernon Square will continue.

Transit officials have been working since 2008 on a plan to better serve the north-south corridor through the center of the District. “That’s where the cranes are,” Metro planner Jim Hughes would say in discussing the construction boom that has created more jobs and housing in that zone.