Metro is debuting its “Rush Plus” service today. In honor of this, the latest step in Metro’s 34-year growth and evo­lution, here is an updated version of our popular animation showing the history of Metrorail service.

This slideshow is no longer available, but you can see an updated one here.

Yellow Line trains will head to Franconia-Springfield and Orange to Largo Town Center. The official map now also uses subtitles for some long station names, and a few stations get new names, most significantly “NoMa-Gallaudet U.”

The rush hour service changes mean that riders headed east of Stadium-Armory or south of King Street (now King St-Old Town) will have to check the destination signs on their trains. Yellow Line and Blue Line riders may want to adjust their travel patterns.

The even more confusing service: Trains changing color

This isn’t the most Metro has ever asked of riders, however. From November 20, 1978 to November 30, 1979, and then again from November 22, 1980 to April 29, 1983, some Blue and Orange trains used one color going in one direction, then switched colors heading back. If you lived in Clarendon in 1981, you would board a Blue Line train headed to DC and then catch an Orange Line train to get home.

Metro had to do this in 1978-1979 because trains at the time used physical rollsigns with text printed on a colored background. The New Carrollton sign had an orange background, while the National Airport destination sign used blue. Therefore, Metro had to have the trains switch colors for each direction.

Then, in the early 1980s, they started doing this again after the segment to Addison Road opened. At the time, with the Yellow Line not yet built, the demand for service on the Rosslyn to National Airport segment (now Blue) better matched the Stadium-Armory to New Carrollton segment (now Orange), and the demand on Rosslyn to Ballston (now Orange) lined up better with Stadium-Armory to Addison Road (now Blue).

Metro map from 1982.

Therefore, Metro ran trains from National Airport to New Carrollton and Ballston to Addison Road. But since the rollsigns didn’t allow using the same color for each end of those services, the trains had to switch colors in each direction.

If Metro had to try something like this today for some reason, how do you think people would react?

The other rush-only service: Green Line Commuter Shortcut

This is also not the first time Metro has had rush hour only service. From December 11, 1993 to September 18, 1999, the Green Line had 2 unconnected segments, one from Greenbelt to Fort Totten and the other from U Street to Anacostia.

On January 27, 1997, Metro started using a single-track switch at Fort Totten to send rush hour Green Line trains from Greenbelt onto the Red Line. They ran on the Red Line tracks to Farragut North, where there is a pocket track to turn around. This “Green Line Commuter Shortcut” continued until the Green Line opened through Columbia Heights and Petworth, connecting the two sections permanently.

Photo by tracktwentynine on Flickr.

Metro never included this on its maps except for a green box explaining the service. Therefore, while today is not the first time Metro has run a rush hour-only service pattern, it’s the first time the maps have displayed it, now using a dashed line.

Metro’s maps did show planned and under construction segments until 2004, but these maps do not. I’ve included the Silver Line under construction, however.

Sources

Most of this data comes from the nycsubway.org timeline of the Washington Metro and WMATA’s history page.

The dates of station name changes come from Wikipedia’s pages on individual stations and other online sources. To keep the number of maps manageable, and because many stations’ exact renaming dates are not available, I’ve grouped station renamings in with the next major service change, even when that takes place years later; for example, Metro renamed Ballston to Ballston-MU in 1995, but the next map, showing the Green Line Commuter Shortcut, depicts the system in 1997.