Track Repairs to Move in Spring From Weekends to Weeknights

Metro will shift track maintenance and repairs from weekends to after the rush period on weeknights starting in spring.

Weekend riders, who have suffered the brunt of delays caused by track work, might get relief. But those riding the rails at night might have to wait longer for trains. The Metro board approved the policy yesterday.

As part of the new approach, Metro would no longer wait for the system to close before starting track maintenance. Instead, work would begin as early as 8 p.m. in outlying stations and 10 p.m. or later at stations downtown. That would give crews six to eight hours to work, officials said, instead of the two- to three-hour window when the system is closed. Track sharing by trains, a familiar phenomenon as Metro tries to maintain its aging infrastructure, would start earlier.

"We can't keep up with it the way that we're going," said David Couch, chief of Metro's infrastructure work.

The change is scheduled to start on the Red Line, Metro's busiest and oldest line. The first segment affected will be between the Judiciary Square and Rhode Island Avenue stations. It will expand over four years from the Dupont Circle to Silver Spring stations. Metro's capital funds cover two years of the project.

Maintenance work would not take place on nights when such major functions as baseball games at Nationals Park and events at Verizon Center are scheduled.

The Red Line work will be the first in a series of projects that will affect all five lines between 2009 and 2021, according to a schedule outlined yesterday. The approach, officials said, will enable Metro to improve reliability and on-time performance over the long run. But during seven of those years, rehabilitation work will take place on three rail lines concurrently.

Noting the "massive communication issue" that looms, board member Anthony R. Giancola said: "We need to communicate exactly how we're going to impact customers. We're talking about a seven-year impact on all the lines."

The new approach is intended to be more efficient because all work in a specific location could be completed at one time, officials said. Metro now has more than 60 contractors doing a variety of work, including repairing fire suppression equipment, air conditioning and power. One repair might require shutting down a stretch of line, resulting in trains sharing a track. But another contractor, fixing something else, could shut the same location at a different time, causing delays.

Rail chief Dave J. Kubicek said he hoped to minimize delays by starting track work when trains typically run less frequently, every 15 to 20 minutes. Board member Peter Benjamin said, however, that recent weekend track work has resulted in longer waits between trains, up to 30 minutes. He asked Kubicek to provide a detailed schedule of how train frequency will be affected under the new approach. "To have 30-minute headways for five years is unacceptable," he said.

Metro has the fewest riders at night, but late-night ridership is growing twice as fast as that at other times of the day, statistics show.

Until spring, maintenance will continue on weekends. Officials said yesterday that Metro track work and a Federal Transit Administration project will cause delays on the Orange, Blue and Yellow lines this weekend.