A Yellow Line train to Huntington crosses over the Potomac. Image by the author.

Two large projects on Metro are scheduled to disrupt life for many on the Yellow and Blue lines, but the agency hopes its efforts to get the word out and provide alternatives is enough to keep the interruption to a minimum. The projects, adding the new Potomac Yard station into the rail system and rehabbing the Yellow Line bridge and tunnel, begin on September 10 and wrap up next May.

Metro’s newest rail station

The Potomac Yard rail station in Alexandria has been under construction the last several years, but completion is approaching soon. The new station will sit in between the National Airport and Braddock Road stations on the Yellow and Blue lines.

Construction of the Potomac Yard station was originally planned to be completed earlier this year and open in April, but Metro delayed the project due to issues found with the station’s Automatic Train Control design.

In order to tie the new station into Metro’s network, the agency is shutting down all rail service on the Yellow and Blue lines south of National Airport between September 10 and October 22.

During that six-week period, there will be no Yellow Line trains. Instead, Blue Line trains will run to both New Carrollton and also Largo, running “every seven to nine minutes.”

Metro is banking on having more 7000-series trains back in order to support those frequencies, but their return is not certain. Metro is hopeful it will be able to submit and gain approval for the second phase of its Return To Service plan in order to run more than 8 7000-series trains at a time. Metro spokesperson Sherri Ly says the agency is continuing work to return all 6000-series trains to service, and will notify customers if/when the agency is able to improve service.

Metro plans to run seven bus shuttles in September and October. Image by Metro

The agency plans to run seven bus shuttles while the six stations south of National Airport are closed. Some will provide “local” travel within the station shutdown area, stopping at multiple stations, while others will provide quicker paths to the rest of the rail system, even across the Potomac into DC itself.

Metro says the local shuttles will run every 10-20 minutes, the express shuttles every 6, and the weekday rush-hour-only ones will run either every 12 (Shuttles 1 & 2) or every 20 (shuttle 3).

Two express shuttles running from Huntington and Franconia to Pentagon are back, having been a part of Metro’s alternate transportation plans during a prior shutdown in this area. Peter Cafiero, Metro’s Managing Director of Inter-Modal Planning, noted during a presentation to the Riders’ Advisory Council that these express buses were well-received by riders previously, and sometimes even provided quicker travel than the rail system did due to their usage of the I-395 highway.

Three of the seven shuttles Metro plans to run will cross the Potomac and run into DC, providing some travel options to riders with different destinations. The agency plans to run these shuttles to near the L’Enfant or Archives stations, as well as near the White House. Cafiero noted the destinations provide riders more options than just terminating all at a single station, and helps the agency by spreading out potential crowds.

Location data will not be available for the shuttles run by contractors, Metro says, but only for the shuttles run by its own Metrobus fleet. Metrobus will be used for providing weekend Blue Line local shuttle service, and will have tracking.

Virginia Railway Express, the Virginia regional rail agency, runs trains that stop near Metro’s Franconia, Crystal City, L’Enfant, and Union Station stops - and is also expected to waive all fares during September.

To note, the Potomac Yard station will not open to serve passengers after the six-week shutdown is complete. Trains will run through the station but without stopping for a while longer.

A seven-month shutdown, Metro’s longest-ever

On October 23, when the six rail stations south of National Airport reopen (there will still only be six; Potomac Yard station will not yet be open), Metro’s Yellow Line bridge between the Pentagon and L’Enfant stations will remain closed, and won’t reopen until May of 2023.

Metro says there’s work that the agency needs to do to both the bridge, as well as the tunnel that leads from the bridge to L’Enfant in DC. On the bridge, the agency says it needs to replace bearings and expansion joints and the dry standpipe system used in firefighting.

In addition to the bridge and tunnel work, Ly says Metro is planning on using the shutdown to do more work in the area, including “grout pad renewal, rail replacement, cross-tie renewal, ballast replacement and tamping, signal maintenance, leak mitigation, joint repairs, and running miles of fiber optic cables for radio system upgrades among other things.”

The tunnel is where Metro says most of the upcoming needed work will happen. The agency says the steel tunnel liner needs repair, and has photos of iron deposits and rust to help make its case. While trains are not running, Metro plans to perform “curtain grouting” of the liner to help keep water from coming into the tunnel, and will also repair cracks in the tunnel concrete sections.

A Metro source told Greater Greater Washington that the original plan for the Yellow Line work called for just a three-month shutdown, not seven. In an emailed response, Ly said although Metro “developed the design and conducted numerous site investigations…The modeling that was done by the contractor indicated that the work requires a seven to eight month closure.”

“The tunnel requires the welding of approximately 1,200 steel plates, a full curtain grouting of the entire exterior surface of the steel-lined tunnel, the removal and replacement of several miles of existing cables that line the walls of the tunnel, the replacement of existing light fixtures, the removal and reinstallation of existing fire line, and a multiple stage coating system to protect the steel liner for the next 50 years,” Ly said.

Image by Metro.

There will only be three rush-hour-only bus shuttles provided during this second phase of the project, since all rail stations are expected to reopen. Metro’s three shuttles will run from: Crystal CIty to L’Enfant Plaza, Pentagon to Archives, and Mt. Vernon to Potomac Park following the former 11Y route.

As in the first phase of the project, the first two shuttles will run every 12 minutes, and the later will run every 20 - during rush hour periods only.

From October 23 to the end of the project in May 2023, Blue Line trains will run both from Franconia-Springfield to Largo, but also Huntington to New Carrollton. All trains will run on the Blue Line tracks through Pentagon up through Rosslyn, turning east to head into DC.

Metro hopes that the two Blue Lines will run every 12 minutes during the shutdown, providing a combined 6-minute headway between King Street and Stadium-Armory. However, that assumes that the agency’s 7000-series rail cars, which have been mostly grounded since October 2021, are back in service. The lines will likely operate less frequently if that hasn’t happened.

Riders that use the Blue and Yellow lines should expect to see Metro staff beginning in late August before the first shutdown, handing out pamphlets and answering questions about the upcoming work.

Metro says it will be publishing blog posts during the shutdowns with information about the ongoing work.

Update: This story was updated at 8:15 am Thursday, July 21, with information from Metro received after it was initially published.

Stephen Repetski is a Virginia native and has lived in the Fairfax area for over 20 years. He has a BS in Applied Networking and Systems Administration from Rochester Institute of Technology and works in Information Technology. Learning about, discussing, and analyzing transit (especially planes and trains) is a hobby he enjoys.