Metro’s trip planner should offer service alerts

Every weekend and many weeknights, Metro undertakes maintenance throughout the system. But the trip planner rarely reflects these delays. Not even major closures, like the one happening this weekend, get noted.

It is not feasible for Metro to attempt to change scheduled arrival times for each maintenance project. Besides, the uncertainties of construction could mean the revised times would likely be inaccurate anyway.

But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing WMATA can do to inform customers. Amtrak takes a very sensible approach in this regard.

For trips that have scheduled work or even unscheduled disruptions, Amtrak puts a “service alert” graphic next to the affected trip options on the webpage passengers use to buy tickets. The clickable graphic is circled above. Clicking this link opens a pop-up with details on the disruption.

WMATA could easily take this approach. A simple graphic and a link could be placed alongside the trip planner results when an itinerary goes through a work zone. That would make it easier for passengers to know ahead of time what they’re facing.

On the positive side, it does appear that Metro has updated their trip planner to ignore routings through Foggy Bottom station this weekend. Passengers are instead routed over the Yellow Line bridge and through Arlington Cemetery station.