Update at 2:20 p.m. — Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld has written a letter to customers in which he warns of more single-tracking delays during the evening rush hour and a total shut down of a portion of the Silver, Orange and Blue lines in D.C. starting at 9 p.m.
Dear Metrorail Customer,
(Updated at 3:35 p.m.) Arlington Cemetery station was temporarily closed — and Blue Line service suspended — due to a reported fire on the track this afternoon.
Two separate fires were put out with a fire extinguisher, according to scanner traffic. Metro is advising riders to expect delays.
Starting Sunday at 7 a.m., Metro will stop accepting paper farecards at turnstiles and will only accept SmarTrip cards.
It’s one of the final steps in Metro’s phasing out of paper farecards, which the agency stopped selling Dec. 31. The very last step will happen this summer, when Metro stops accepting paper cards as trade-ins.
More Cars on Local Streets Due to I-66 Plans? — Will plans to toll I-66 inside the Beltway during rush hour send cars spilling onto local streets in Arlington? Not exactly. Traffic studies suggest the opposite will happen: more cars will use the highway rather than seek alternate routes through Arlington. [Washington Post]
Metro Begins Installation of Cable for Cell Service — Metro has begun the process of installing 100 miles of cable in Metrorail tunnels in order to allow mobile phone and better emergency radio coverage. [WMATA]
You know a top executive’s gig is tough when an entire room applauds after someone gets up and says, “thank you for taking the job.”
That’s what happened Wednesday night at the Arlington Committee of 100 meeting at Marymount University, featuring new Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld.
(Updated at 8:20 p.m.) Firefighters were dispatched to the Pentagon City Metro station for a report of smoke in a Metro tunnel earlier this evening.
Emergency crews found an insulator fire on the inbound side of the tunnel. Trains bypassed the station while firefighters investigated the problem, according to ACFD. By 8:10 p.m., the fire had been extinguished and firefighters began leaving the scene.
As of 9:45 a.m., the northbound I-395 HOV lanes are jammed starting around Army Navy Country Club, while mainline I-395 slows near the Pentagon.
Memorial Bridge and Washington Blvd around the Pentagon is jammed. Traffic on eastbound I-66, approaching the Roosevelt Bridge slows near Rosslyn. N. Lynn Street in Rosslyn and the Key Bridge are also crawling.
Traffic volume on I-395, I-66 and Route 50 was relatively light this morning. Some delays were reported on I-395 at King Street earlier, possibly the result of snow clearing operations.
Every Metrorail line is running every 12 minutes except the Silver Line, which remains closed. WMATA was unable to open aboveground service on the Orange Line between East Falls Church and Vienna this morning, so Ballston is the Virginia end of the line.
Updated Metrorail service as of 11:00 a.m. https://t.co/qAzQ7GGJWe. #wmata pic.twitter.com/Zb9uKyMFC1
— Metro Forward (@wmata) January 25, 2016
Red, Orange and Green line trains only will run between 7 a.m. tomorrow and midnight.
Service on these lines will be limited to underground stops and trains will run every 20-25 minutes, Metro said.
A piece of maintenance equipment — like the one pictured, left — broke down just outside the National Airport station this afternoon, leading to single-tracking. While the equipment was eventually moved to allow normal rail operations, delays lingered into the evening rush.
Via Twitter, riders reported various problems, from long delays to trains being offloaded at already-crowded station.
Nathaniel Moone, 45, was taken into custody this past Friday evening by Metro Transit Police, at the Eastern Market Metro station in D.C.
Police say Moone was the man who tried to rob a Wells Fargo bank in Rosslyn on Dec. 30, but fled before receiving any money. He later successfully robbed the Wells Fargo across from Costco in Pentagon City this past Thursday, Jan. 7.
