Joe Rogalsky, The Examiner
2007-08-01 07:00:00.0
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WASHINGTON -

Metro officials will propose having every other Blue Line train bypass several stations in Virginia as part of the plan to accommodate the rail traffic involved in the new Dulles extension, officials said.

The idea, which still needs approval from the transit system’s board of directors, is supposed to prevent trains from stacking up after the Dulles extension goes online in 2012.

By the time the first phase of the Silver Line to Dulles opens, Metro expects it will have added 248 cars to its fleet and will run mainly eight-car trains. Those plans, however, haven’t erased concerns that the trains will be full of passengers after a few stops and that the Silver Line trains will cause other lines to be shortchanged.

“The riders of the Blue Line could be disenfranchised and denied a direct route into downtown Washington,” Alexandria resident John Antonelli said last month at a transportation public hearing.

Today, without the added volume from the Dulles extension, trains back up outside the Courthouse station, Rossyln and other stops that are used by both lines. When the first phase of the extension opens, the new Silver Line trains will share those stations with Blue and Orange service as well.

To prevent further delays at those chokepoints once the Dulles extension is operational, Metro would send every other Blue Line train from the Pentagon station directly to L’Enfant Plaza. The trains would then go to Gallery Place and follow the Yellow Line to Fort Totten.

“If we do that, it will free up slots for [Silver Line] trains,” Jim Hughes, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s operations director, told The Examiner recently.

Metro’s plans also call for ending the Silver Line at the Stadium-Armory station instead of extending it to where either the Blue or Orange Line ends in Maryland. The Silver Line’s first phase will run from Wiehle Avenue in Reston to East Falls Church.

The second phase, scheduled to open in 2015, will run past Dulles and serve two stations in Loudoun County.

jrogalsky@dcexaminer.com