Another Sunny Day on the Metro

About 5:10 I arrived at the Metro station in DC to hear that there were delays on the Blue line. Pretty typical so I was prepared for a slow trip home. What I wasn't prepared for was to be kicked off the train at Arlington Cemetery. Apparently, the Pentagon metro station had been shut down.

Great.

According to the NBC4 article here is what happened:

At about 4:45 p.m., the station was closed because of smoke, according to Metro officials, and trains on both the Blue and Yellow lines were stopped in both directions, causing significant delays.

Metro personnel and the Arlington County Fire Department went to the scene and extinguished the fire, officials said. By 5:10 p.m., trains were sharing a single track between the Pentagon City and Arlington Cemetery stations on the Blue Line and between the Pentagon City and L'Enfant stations on the Yellow Line.The Pentagon station reopened at about 5:30.

The smoke and fire was caused by debris on the track. It was initially reported to be an arcing insulator.

Shuttle buses will ran between the Pentagon City, Pentagon, Arlington Cemetery and L'Enfant Plaza stations during the closure.

Here is what really happened:

I got on a blue line train about 5:15. We headed to Foggy Bottom picked up passengers nothing was said about the stopping at Arlington. The train kept moving and we picked up even more passengers at Rosslyn, again nothing was said.

The train arrives at Arlington and everyone was instructed to exit the train. Around 5:25 pm, I and hundreds of other passengers exited the train. Everyone was shocked. Of all the places to be stranded, Arlington Cemetery isn't high on my list. Arlington isn't exactly a cab mecca.

Finally, the crowd managed to move toward the station exit. The station manager was announcing that shuttles were available. Not super excited about that, but what could anyone do?

I finally made it outside the station and there had to have been almost 1,000 people standing around.

Those wonderful shuttles? Apparently stuck in traffic. Unfortunately, there was no hope of Van getting there quickly with the traffic. Time for Plan C - I called a cab. My estimated wait time - 20 minutes.

About 5 minutes later they announced that the blue-line was single tracking. So I canceled the cab and followed the masses back into the station to wait. The train arrived and everyone crammed in the car. The train left the station and stopped.

Again, we waited. About 10 minutes later the train started moving and we made it to Pentagon Station. Thankfully, it was smooth sailing from there.

My total travel time - 1 hour and 15 minutes.