Should Metro extend the Yellow Line?

Yellow Line, outdoors... Photo by Wayne Whitehorne.

From Scott Pomeroy:

Riders have suggested extending the line to Greenbelt as a way to ease crowding and to bring trains more often to the growing areas of Petworth, Columbia Heights, U Street and Shaw.

What's your opinion?

First Community Meeting
Monday, January 23, 7 p.m.
DC Housing Finance Agency, 815 Florida Avenue, NW - Auditorium
(U Street/Cardozo Metro)

Councilmember Jim Graham, WMATA Incoming CEO Dan Tangherlini, Board Member Gladys Mack, several ANC commissioners and the leaders of the Mid-City Business Association are scheduled to attend.

Scott writes:

Have you ever gotten on the Green Line late at night or on the weekend, right as the train is leaving, to then spend twenty minutes waiting on the platform for the next train? Infrequent trains during off peak hours is a result of a decision made in the 80’s not to bring the Yellow Line service to near West Hyattsville and then build east towards Bowie as was called for in the original WMATA rail plans. Instead it was decided to build a turnaround at Mt. Vernon Square that would serve as the end of the line. Since the Yellow and Green lines share the same tracks from L’Enfant to Mt. Vernon Square, terminating the Yellow Line service at Mt. Vernon Square means that all the stops north of Mt. Vernon Square can only have half the possible rail service.

Since December WMATA has examined several enhanced service possibilities, the needs required to implement, and the overall costs involved for each of several options and will be providing this information at the public meeting on January 23, at the Housing Finance Agency Building. A very fitting location for this meeting given the 1000’s of new housing units being built in the next three years within three blocks of the eastern entrance to the U Street Metro at the African American Civil War Memorial. This new urban density has spurred the necessity to reexamine the frequency of service at these stations.

My personal belief is that extending “Yellow Line” service to Greenbelt during off–peak hours on evenings and weekends will be revealed as a cost effective solution that does not require costly new construction or the purchase of new rail cars and that will only require operations capital to implement now. The major expenses involved in the development of the Inner “Green Line”, land development, building tunnels, etc has been paid for already, yet we are not fully leveraging that investment by terminating Yellow Line Service at Mt. Vernon Square.

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