On Thursday, February 28, the Metro board voted on whether to extend or keep the current Metrorail opening hours for the upcoming fiscal year. After months of campaigning and arguments, the end vote was 7-1 in favor of keeping current Metro hours. This is the third year the Metro is implementing reduced hours of operation, which will continue until at least July 1, 2020.
The metro will continue to operate from 5am to 1am on Fridays, 7am to 1am on Saturdays, 8am to 11pm on Sundays and 5am to 11:30pm on most weekdays.
Maintaining the same reduced hours allows the metro system to continue nighttime maintenance, hence making the Metrorail safer for riders in the long term. The nighttime maintenance will also allow Metro to run more eight-car trains, increase rush-hour service, implement a flat weekend fare and end the turn back of northbound Red Line trains at Silver Spring, allowing them to continue to the Glenmont station.
The federal government also expressed their concern over expanding the Metro hours, threatening to withhold $1.6 billion if the hours were extended. The decision to keep reduced hours helped shelter other regional transport services, such as the Purple Line, from potential loss in transportation funding.
Nonetheless, the decision to keep reduced Metro hours poses a hardship for many late shift and early morning workers. In addition to Corbett Price, a DC board member who was the only no vote, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser also was a staunch advocate for restoration of late-night services.
“I sympathize with the business community and the workers who have to travel late at night,” Price said. “We’ve sacrificed enough and it’s imperative that we get those hours back.”
If both of DC’s two voting members on the board opposed the extension, a jurisdictional veto would have been set in place, allowing the Metro to resume late night hours.
During negotiations, a potential compromise that proposed a schedule of 5:30am to midnight weekdays, compared with the current schedule of 5am to 11:30pm, was introduced. The system would close later on Fridays and Saturdays too at 2am. However, the compromise was met with opposition and did not garner enough support to be passed.
“It was a tough issue, and we all want to be in the same place,” Metro general manager, Paul Wiedefeld said. “We all want more service, and we want to get there as quick as we can, but we want to make sure that it’s safe when we do it.”
Article by MoCo Student staff writer Emily Zhang of Winston Churchill High School.