FreeRide
With Van Ness Work, Red Line Delays to Continue
Map It:  Cleveland Park   Dupont Circle   Friendship Heights   Tenleytown   Van Ness   Woodley Park 

Image courtesy WMATA
SORRY, RED LINERS — those weekend delays you've been dealing with aren't quite over yet.

Now that complex platform rehabilitation work at the Metro Center station and switch replacement near the Medical Center station have concluded, a new project will soon be getting started at the Van Ness-UDC station and will take place over four upcoming weekends.

Van Ness is home to an interlocking switch that allows trains to travel from one track to another. The two nearest switches are located near the Dupont Circle and Friendship Heights stations, meaning that for inbound and outbound trains to proceed through the work zone, they'll have to share a track through the following stations: Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan, Cleveland Park, Van Ness-UDC, Tenleytown-AU and Friendship Heights. That's a pretty long stretch, meaning that there could be delays of 30 minutes.

The work will start Friday at 9 p.m. and wrap up by closing on Sunday — a pattern that will repeat during the weekends of Feb. 29-March 2, March 7-9 and March 14-16.

The service pattern goes as follows:

» Trains will service the entire length of the Red Line every 15 minutes, except between the Farragut North and Friendship Heights stations, where trains will run every 30 minutes.

» Alternating trains leaving from the Shady Grove terminal will turn back at Friendship Heights to expedite service at that end of the Red Line.

» Alternating trains leaving from the Glenmont terminal will turn back at the Farragut North station to expedite service through downtown, Union Station, Silver Spring and intermediate stations.

To avoid the work zone, Metro suggests that rail passengers heading between Upper Northwest and downtown D.C. consider taking Metrobus' L2 route on Connecticut Avenue and 18th Street NW and the 32/34/35/36 buses on Wisconsin Avenue as alternatives.

Metro's online Trip Planner won't factor the rail switch work into its calculated itineraries, but it should help to predict the length of a bus journey.

» "Weekend Switch Work at Van Ness to Cause Red Line Delays" [WMATA]

Image courtesy WMATA

Posted by Michael Grass at 1:35 PM on February 19, 2008
Tagged in Cleveland Park , Dupont Circle , Free Ride , Friendship Heights , Metro , News , Red Line , Tenleytown , The District , Top Stories , Transit , Van Ness , Woodley Park
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