County Urges Residents to Find Metro Alternatives Before June 18

New Carrollton, MD — The message Thursday to Prince George’s County commuters was simple: it will get worse.

Delays during the first week of Metro track overhaul – dubbed Surges by officials – have been reported. The SafeTrack plan will condense three years of repairs into just one year, and will mean big delays for commuters in the near future.

From June 18 through July 3, there will be no Metro train service between Benning Road and Eastern Market on the Blue and Silver lines and between Minnesota Avenue and Eastern Market on the Orange Line.

At a press conference Thursday, county and Metro officials urged commuters to find new routes to work or to telecommute. The county will add service to TheBus 15X connector route, which will take workers from the New Carrollton Station to the Greenbelt Station, where they can take Metro’s Green Line or board a MARC train, WTOP reports.

To help during the crunch, the Maryland Transit Administration will add one to two cars per MARC train on its Brunswick and Camden lines, which serve Greenbelt.

And, Prince George’s County will provide buses to supplement Metro shuttle buses that will give service to and from the closed stations at Potomac Avenue and Stadium-Armory.

Workers will pass out pamphlets with bus routes and other options for commuters at the county’s Metro stations ahead of the next phase of work. There are 15 surges plans during the massive overhaul of the system.

Metro officials released the final "SafeTrack" plan last month, which lays out a comprehensive maintenance effort that will significantly expand maintenance time on weekends, weeknights and midday hours, according to a Metro statement.

The move comes as Metro continues to battle problems with smoke and fire issues in the Metro rail system, which led to the death of a woman near L'Enfant station last year and continues to plague the system despite a 24-hour system-wide shutdown earlier this year.

Under the plan, there will be 15 "Safety Surges," which is when key parts of the system will be shut down for a long period of time. Each of these "Surge" projects will result in around-the-clock single-tracking or even an entire shutdown of track segments, which could snarl rush-hour commutes. That will mean lots of crowding and long wait times for riders, and Metro is urging commuters to seek other forms of transportation during these periods.

The first Surge project began June 4, and brought single-tracking between East Falls Church and Ballston Metro stations on the Orange and Silver lines. The project will take 13 days, and will result in stations west of Ballston getting a train every 18 minutes.

The SafeTrack Plan can be viewed and downloaded here: Metro's SafeTrack Final Plan and the regional SafeTrack schedule here - SafeTrack Schedule. 

Prince George’s County officials urge residents to find an alternative travel method; visit the Rideshare website at RideSmartsolutions.com. The website has details on carpooling, vanpooling, telecommuting and other methods to help avoid delays.

For the first Safety Surge, Metrorail customers are warned:

• Orange Line trains will run every 18 minutes at stations between Vienna and Ballston
• Silver Line trains will run every 18 minutes at all times
• Additional Orange Line trains will run between Ballston and New Carrollton; however, trains will still be less frequent than normal
• Expect significant crowding on Orange and Silver line trains
• Blue, Yellow, Green and Red line service will operate normally during rush hours during Safety Surge 1.

The Surge projects will continue until mid-March. You can find a full list of the projects and their dates here.

The new plan addresses the FTA’s concern that some of the most critical areas were not going to be addressed immediately. The revised schedule moves up repairs that will significantly reduce service for Orange, Silver and Blue line riders, reports WTOP.

In addition to the Safety Surge projects, SafeTrack also includes closing the Metrorail system at midnight every night (rather than at 3 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights) and expanding weekday maintenance opportunities by starting selected work at 8 p.m., rather than 10 p.m.