From the WP:
"Metro could shut down entire rail lines to do extended maintenance, board chair says"
Metro’s top officials warned Wednesday that the transit system is in such need of repair that they might shut down entire rail lines for as long as six months for maintenance, potentially snarling thousands of daily commutes and worsening congestion in the already traffic-clogged region. Board Chairman Jack Evans and General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld put rail riders on notice about possible extended closures at a high-level conference of local leaders. The discussion also revealed strong resistance to what Evans said was a “dire” need for more than $1 billion a year in additional funding for Metro. The officials’ comments underlined the depth of Metro’s problems, which are steadily becoming more apparent as Wiedefeld continues to probe the rail system’s defects since taking over as the transit agency’s chief executive in November. Until now, Metro has typically done repair work at night or during short shutdowns over weekends. An exception was the unprecedented shutdown of the entire system on a regular workday March 16 for emergency track safety inspections. Wiedefeld ordered that closure in what now seems to have been an initial taste of more bitter medicine to follow.
“The system right now, in order to do the maintenance that needs to be done, cannot be done on three hours a night and on weekends. It just can’t,” said Evans, who also is a D.C. Council member (D-Ward 2). “So in order to do repairs that are necessary, it may come to the point where we have to close the entire Blue Line for six months. People will go crazy. But there are going to be hard decisions that have to be made in order to get this fixed,” Evans said. Although he twice singled out the Blue Line as a candidate for closure, Evans said any of Metro’s six lines could be shuttered in full or in part. He said the Red Line was the least likely to be shut, because much repair work has already been done on it.
^ I am so glad I no longer have to deal with the rat-race down there (where it can take 30 minutes just to get out of your development to go to the store.) While I lived down there I had to take the Blue Line and the VRE (which uses the same tracks as the Blue Line) nearly everyday. There's no other option other than driving yourself and being stuck for hours in traffic jams or taking a commuter bus (and still being stuck in those jams.) There is no reason for this big mess since the Metro is only 40 years old (this year) while NYC's Subway is over 100 years old and hasn't had these kinds of problems. If any of the lines are shut down for more than a few days then it will be complete chaos with all the workers and tourists trying to get around an already congested area. ^
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