Metro has drastically cut the numbers of Orange and Silver Line trains after fire destroyed a power station near Stadium-Armory last week. Travis graphed the numbers of trains passing through Farragut West versus the usual service pattern.

Farragut West, September 28, 2015. Click for the entire chart. Chart by the author.

Metro already wasn’t meeting its schedule for running trains through Farragut West, but now that previous service level looks great compared to the level forced by the fire.

Greater Greater Washington readers felt real pain on the rails because of the changes. Walter A wrote,

This was a bad day. At 9 am the Wiehle trains started closer to 10 minutes apart, and a coworker reported Vienna this morning started 12 minutes apart — not 8. Rosslyn at 5:30 pm was over capacity with riders not able to get on a Wiehle train, then a Vienna train. Fun times finally getting on the next Wiehle stop as my coworker back-commuted into town to try to get onto a Vienna train.

And here’s W_in_Reston:

Those 8 mins between trains can be 6 mins, or 10, even at Wiehle-Reston. On Monday it was 10 mins. Today 6. That makes it a bit harder to plan the commute, but not by much.

During evening rush on Monday there was definitely insufficient capacity on the line. Going west, past Metro Center, the train was essentially full and people were packing in under increasing pressure. By Farragut West only people who got on replaced those who came off. At Rosslyn a whole platform of people was left behind. Even all the way to Wiehle the train was packed.

WMATA announced that the Blue Line will use all eight-car trains to try to reduce crowding despite the lost service, though there were still several six-car trains Tuesday morning. (One Metro tweet said a six-car train was added on top of planned trains).

MetroMinder posted an analysis of the Blue Line headways at Potomac Avenue Tuesday morning, which included some gaps of 19 minutes and up. Travis plans to record additional data at Farragut West over the next few weeks. This will help analyze how this new scheduling works out and if Metro can maintain planned 8-minute headways.

So far, a lot of riders are wondering if they can endure up to six months of this.

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Tagged: metro, service disruption, transit, wmata

Travis Maiers spent most of his life in South Florida before moving to the Washington region in 2009. He has a degree in International Studies from American University and works at a DC non-profit focused on international economic policy. He currently resides in the Forest Hills neighborhood of DC and enjoys learning about all things related to transportation and urban planning.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.