Metro disruptions on a busy D.C. weekend fuel frustration

Pittsburgh resident Peter Kogan and his 9-year-old son, Benjamin, were just trying to get to the International Spy Museum. But the process turned into their own sort of “Mission: Impossible” on Sunday: navigating Metro’s labyrinth of weekend trackwork and maintenance.

Yellow Line trains were single-tracking — and there were none in sight — so they boarded a Blue Line train marked “Special” at Crystal City, thinking they would get downtown that way.

But when they got to Foggy Bottom, the operator suddenly announced that the train was going out of service. They followed the instructions, hopping on a shuttle bus — crowded and stuffy on an 85-degree day — before disembarking at Metro Center, where they were left to complete their trek on foot.

“We’ve been traveling for more than an hour now,” said Kogan, 45, asking directions to the museum. “I want to say, just comparing it to New York, it’s pretty sad today.”

Kogan echoed a common refrain among dismayed tourists and others trying to maneuver the system on a busy weekend — both on and off the tracks:

“Going back, we may take Uber.”

The scene outside Metro Center was reminiscent of a transit agency dealing with ridership woes and floundering reliability. Out-of-town visitors, propped against their roller bags, stood glued to their smartphone screens as they Googled walking directions or pulled up ride-hailing apps. Every few minutes another shuttle bus would arrive, and a swarm of seemingly exasperated passengers would disembark.

“It seems like a guided tour that we didn’t pay for,” Kogan, a lawyer, said later from the James Bond exhibit.

[Metro adds Red Line to weekend track work list, adding more disruption to busy weekend in D.C.]

SafeTrack work, crews testing for stray current and weekend single-tracking combined to leave scattered and inconsistent service on all six Metrorail lines, even as tens of thousands of people flocked to the city Saturday for the Peoples Climate March and the Capitals-Penguins game at Verizon Center in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Not to mention the usual hordes of tourists and flurry of conferences that are in town this time of year.

Downtown, the disruptions stretched from Federal Triangle to Foggy Bottom on the Orange and Blue lines, as crews built ceiling grids to secure new tiling and laid radio and cellular cabling along tunnel walls, according to Metro spokesman Dan Stessel.

On the Red Line, trains were single-tracking as crews were conducting stray-current testing between Judiciary Square and Farragut North after electrical incidents created severe service disruptions three times in two weeks. The Silver Line operated on a limited segment, from Wiehle-Reston East to Ballston. Green Line trains were running every 20 minutes because of a SafeTrack surge. And the Yellow Line was also single-tracking, with trains every 20 minutes, as crews renewed rail fasteners in a stretch from National Airport to Braddock Road.

“Metro is not unique in scheduling track work on weekends, when ridership is less half of weekdays,” Stessel said. “And the point is to get at these issues on weekends — in a predictable, scheduled way — so that weekday commutes aren’t disrupted by unexpected failures.”

But for those who encountered the delays, the disruptions were enough to leave them wondering why they turned to Metro at all.

Matt Chance, 28, of Boston was fuming after two days of dealing with reduced service, calling it “a pain in the [butt]” and lamenting the decision to spend $29 on two one-day rail passes for Sunday — one for him and one his mother — though he said taking Uber wouldn’t have been any cheaper.

[Climate March draws massive crowd to D.C. in sweltering heat]

Chance and his mother, Teresa, of Huntsville, Ark., were sightseeing, visiting Ford’s Theatre and other downtown landmarks after departing their Navy Yard hotel on Sunday.

“On a normal day, being able to navigate the trains and stops [would be hard],” Teresa Chance said. Now, she said, “a piece is just sucked out.”

The Chances said they spent 20 minutes stuck in traffic on a shuttle bus Saturday near DAR Constitution Hall — the site of Samantha Bee’s “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” — before the driver, hearing passengers’ complaints, let them off early to complete their journeys on foot.

“The problem with buses is traffic is so bad with everybody in town,” Matt Chance said.

Stessel said the shuttle buses were “running smoothly,” with limited crowding and “no significant” waits or detours. But some riders said the disruptions caught them off guard and left them confused, although they applauded Metro personnel for helping them navigate the disruptions.

“We’ve been walking for days,” said Jeanne St. Pierre, 66, who attended Saturday’s march with her husband, David Haber, 72. “For somebody who doesn’t know the town and how far things are from each other, it’s just a little challenging.”

The Oregon couple’s first brush with the disruptions came Saturday night, when they were planning to head to Dupont Circle. They arrived to find the McPherson Square station closed — and Metro Center and Farragut North, where they could catch the Red Line, were a bit out of walking range for them. On Sunday evening, they were planning to head to Eastern Market to meet friends.

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“I think we’re just going to end up Ubering or taking a taxi, meaning it will be way more expensive,” St. Pierre said.

Stessel said that despite the march, Saturday’s ridership was comparable to a typical Saturday in April. As for why Metro couldn’t schedule around the event, he pointed to the numerous demonstrations and large events in the capital over the past month.

“If it’s not the Climate March this weekend, it would have been the Science March last weekend, or the Tax March the weekend before that, or the Cherry Blossom parade the weekend before that,” Stessel said. “There’s always something going on in this region, and our planning teams work hard to ensure that weekend riders can get where they need to go while still giving track crews and contractors the access they need to get essential work done.”

Nicole Schroeder, 37, who usually rides in from East Falls Church, said dealing with weekend track work on top of SafeTrack during the week has been frustrating. The year-long repair program has repeatedly targeted stretches of track in Northern Virginia, disrupting her daily commute on the Orange and Silver lines.

“It just makes you regret taking Metro instead of driving,” she said of the weekend work. “I was just so looking forward to opening my book [on the train]. I was about there and they were like ‘oh, we’re offloading.’ ”

Ben Leibig, 23, of Hershey, Pa., was wheeling his luggage toward Metro Center after stepping off the shuttle bus from Foggy Bottom. Leibig, a college student, had been in town visiting his girlfriend at George Washington University. He parked his car at Shady Grove at the beginning of the weekend, thinking it’d be easier to park there and take Metro into the city.

It wasn’t.

“It is what it is,” he said, before ducking inside Metro Center to catch the Red Line.