Metro Announces Columbus Day Closures a Month Early, in Move to Avert Complaints

Eager to seem more upfront with riders, Metro announced Tuesday that there will be no service at three stations on the Green and Yellow lines over the Columbus Day weekend -- a full month before the closures.

The announcement that the Waterfront-SEU and Archives-Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter stations would shut down and that there would be no Green or Yellow line service at L'Enfant Plaza from the night of Oct. 9 until the morning of Oct. 13 came on the same day that service returned to normal on the Blue and Yellow lines after a weekend of long delays.

Last week, the transit agency came under fire from its board because of the late notice it gave about plans to close the Crystal City, Pentagon and Reagan National Airport stations over the Labor Day weekend.

"We took that into consideration and moved forward as quickly as possible to announce at least the preliminary plans for the scope of work" over Columbus Day weekend, said Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel.

To prepare for the work to be done during next month's closures, Metro crews will do 14 nights of work over the coming four weeks, starting Sunday. On those nights, from 9:30 p.m. until the system closes, trains traveling in both directions will share a single track between the Navy Yard and Mount Vernon Square stations. Green and Yellow line riders are advised to allow an additional 45 minutes during the weeknight rail work.

Over Labor Day weekend, more than 68,000 people were forced to take shuttle buses to navigate major track work that shut down the three stations, according to Metro.

Shuttle buses will again help transport passengers on the Columbus Day weekend. Taubenkibel said free shuttles will run between Navy Yard and Gallery Place-Chinatown, and planners are figuring out other possible shuttle routes.

Although it's technically a federal holiday, far more people work on Columbus Day than Labor Day. Although only about 227,000 used Metrorail last Labor Day (that number plummeted to 165,000 passengers Monday, probably because of the closures), more than 411,000 people took Metrorail trips on Columbus Day, according to statistics. L'Enfant Plaza is the sixth-busiest station in the system on an average day.

"People do work over the Columbus Day weekend, but this is work we cannot put off," Taubenkibel said.

The work will entail installing four rail switches outside the L'Enfant Plaza Station. This is similar to what was done last weekend at Pentagon City.

Taubenkibel said crews have replaced switches at the New Carrollton and Arlington Cemetery stations. He said several others in the downtown core need to be replaced -- including near the Smithsonian, McPherson Square and Foggy Bottom stations.

"In the near future, this work is going to continue," he said. "We are going to be looking at long holiday weekends going into 2010."