WASHINGTON — Attention Metro riders, prepare for train delays this weekend.
Metro will be closing stations located on the Blue, Orange and Silver lines for major repairs. WMATA announced they will begin doing work on aerial structures due to decades of wear and exposure to the elements.
The repairs will take place during the next five weekends through the end of the year. Work will begin Saturday and will continue through Sunday, November 12. There will be an additional weekend closure in December, that date has not been announced yet.
Metro has over 150 elevated structures, stretching over 20 miles of track that are nearly 50 years old. The stretch is between the Stadium-Armory station and Minnesota Avenue station.
To combat the inconvenience, buses will be running between Eastern Market and Minnesota Ave/Benning Road for the following two weekends.
During these closures, metro employees will be replacing tracks, pouring new concrete, replacing rail ties, and fasteners, and installing new cables.
In 2021, WMATA announced Metro’s Aerial Structures Rehabilitation Project, which is an initiative created to repair and replace outside tracks. So far, they have completed six of the 11 projects on their list.
Last weekend, riders experienced disruptions between the McPherson Square station and Metro Center station for similar repairs. Those repairs occurred as a direct result of the train derailment that happened on September 29.
Metro has announced they are on track to add additional weekend closures next year to finish the aerial structure repairs. They have not released the dates for those repairs as of yet.