Readers of district, schmistrict, I come before you today with a request for information. You see, the Yellow Line has been acting a little weird lately, and I don’t know why.
A summary of the issue at hand: During rush hours, the Mt Vernon Square Station is the last stop for northbound Yellow Line trains. After dropping their passengers at that station, the train leaves the station, switches to the southbound tracks, picks up the southbound passengers at MVS Station, and heads back through downtown and on to Huntington. Pretty straight forward stuff. It looks like this (apologies for the terrible illustrations):
Well, in the mornings I usually take the southbound Yellow Line train. Because it’s rush hour, I’m getting on a train at its first stop (which is great for getting a seat.) Normally this just entails heading into the station and waiting at the platform marked Huntington/Branch Ave. Again, totally duh. The train comes to the expected place, we load up and are on our way.
But lately, things have been different maybe 50 percent of the time. What happens is that a northbound Yellow Line train will arrive at the station, offload its passengers, and then immediately become a southbound train leaving from the wrong side of the platform. After leaving the station it makes the switch back to the correct (southbound) tracks. Basically, it does this:
Now, obviously this isn’t a big deal and I haven’t yet missed the train because of it. But it is a little confusing since your train is coming not where you expect it, but behind you on the tracks marked with the wrong destination. I can easily see someone being too groggy/iPod entranced/much of a tourist to realize that the right train is actually behind them.
So anyway, does anyone know why this is being done? Like I said, it seems to be about half the time and, as far as I can tell, basically at random. Maybe it’s a scheduling thing, where it’s quicker to just send the train back down the same tracks? Any enlightenment would be appreciated. In the meantime, I’ll just focus on keeping my wits about me. You never know what’s going to happen with WMATA!
I’ve noticed this, and had pretty much the same thoughts as you – not a big deal, but kind of confusing for the tourist/someone not paying attention. In one case it happened backward, i.e. I was on a Yellow Line northbound train during afternoon rush hour, and it pulled into and deposited passengers on the southbound side of the Mt. Vernon platform. I got off and had to get my bearings before realizing I needed to board the Green Line on the OTHER side in order to continue going north.
Unfortunately I have no real insight… like you, I assumed it was a scheduling thing, in order to accommodate other trains arriving/leaving from the two platforms.
Is this because of the switch replacement that has been going on there for the past several weeks?
The only thing I can think of is that they have recently been doing maintenance work on the track switch that allows Yellow line trains to change direction in the normal fashion. It’s possible that’s the reason why some trains are simply reversing and going back down the “wrong” direction.
Aren’t they doing work on the switch at Mt. Vernon? Maybe it’s related to that.
Ahh yes…I totally forgot about the switch work. That would definitely make sense. Much appreciated, Brian/Adam/Chris.