25 minute evening headways?

Are 25-minute Metro headways every evening in our future? Metro has a huge backlog of track repair projects, and yesterday the WMATA Board discussed a proposal to “cluster” the work, completely rehabbing one segment of track at a time and performing the work on weeknights and weekends, not just overnight.

This may well be the smart move, but I share the Metro board’s concerns about delays. Night after night for five years, trains could come no more frequently than every 15-25 minutes after 10 pm, Metro’s Dave Kubicek told the board. That wouldn’t impact most commuters, but would create a major impediment to riding the system to go out to eat. And what about late baseball games or concerts in Chinatown? The platform at Gallery Place is already packed after events like that, and trains come every 10-15 minutes. If people stop feeling like Metro is a reliable way to get around, vehicle trips will start going up again.

Having trains break down constantly during rush hours would be worse, and if this is what it takes to fix the system, then we’ll have to do it. I hope Metro will take every possible step to minimize delays, however. When trains have single-tracked on weekends in the past, sometimes a train passes through the single-track area and another one on the other end isn’t yet in position to head the other way. Metro should add backup trains if necessary to keep service running on time.