TIL that Metro platforms have a slight slope away from the edge, so that anything casually dropped doesn’t roll onto the tracks. (Ronald H. Deiter, The Story of Metro: Transportation and Politics in the Nation’s Capital, rev/e, 1990, p. 43)
Category: Transit in D.C.
Silver Line progress report: 48
MWAA says that Phase 2 will be “substantially completed” by April 2020. An optimistic estimate of how long Metro will spend testing pegs an opening date of September. But there are known defects that haven’t been addressed. Don’t hold your breath for a September 2020 opening.
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So, um, I was apparently the first Twitterite to notice that the pylons at the reconstructed Van Dorn Street station were borked.
In Metro’s defense, as Jordan Pascale reports,
“… yesterday’s media tour preceded Metro inspections that would have flagged and corrected this issue,” Metro spokesperson Ian Jannetta said in an email.
Silver Line progress report: 47
Barring new hitches, MWAA has set 16 July 2020 as the opening date for Phase II, according to reporting by Max Smith. WMATA is noncommittal on the date.
It was the engineering
The irritating canard about Metro service to Georgetown, exploded one more time: “How the urban legend of Georgetown residents halting a Metro stop came to be,” by Topher Mathews.
I researched the archives of the Washington Post and the Washington Star, looking for contemporaneous mentions of local opposition to a Metro stop in Georgetown. Throughout the period of the planning of Metro (i.e. the 1960s through to the system’s opening in 1976), I could not find one example.
Silver Line progress report: 46
Phase II may not be in revenue service until this time next year. Quality control has been a sticking point.
Silver Line progress report: 45
More bumps in the road for Phase 2. Lori Aratani has the report.
Silver Line progress report: 44
Earlier this week, test trains began running on the section of track from Innovation Center to west of the airport, as reported by Max Smith.
Pennsylvania Boogie-Woogie
ICYMI: An archive of conceptual designs for Metro’s system map by Massimo Vignelli.
Silver Line progress report: 43
Defects in precast concrete panels at five of the six stations under construction threaten to delay a 2020 opening of Phase 2 of the Silver Line.
Silver Line progress report: 42
Lori Aratani has an update on Phase 2: design and construction 67% complete, and the project is two years from “substantial completion.” Come Phase 2 in 2020, I will miss boarding at the terminus in the morning, but presumably I will be jostling with fewer people on the platform for a seat.
Retirement
Don’t go up that green ramp, #1115!
The first of Metro’s 1000-series cars is taken out of service, to live on a nice farm.
Silver Line progress report: 41
This week, crews will be blasting rock at the future site of the Loudoun County yards near the Silver Line terminus. Boom.
Going
Meanwhile, on 15 March, Metro will start removing revenue-service 1000-series cars from the line and shipping them off for scrap.
“It’s certainly the end of an era, no question,” [spokesman Dan] Stessel said. “They have a distinctive character to them that is unique to Metro. Even that high-pitched squeal they make when they’re braking — that’s unique to the 1Ks.” (Here, Stessel emitted a high-pitched squeal, then chuckled.) “That sound you hear as the train pulls into the station and is slowing down, that squeak: No other cars make that sound.”
Hopscotch
Dan Malouff rides the H Street streetcar on opening day.