Yellow Line Service reopens Sunday after 8-month shutdown

When the Yellow Line shut down last September, commuter Toni Hardy was forced to take Metro shuttles, which worked quickly at rush hour, or the Blue Line --  but that sometimes added an hour to her commute.

"When I close or when I'm getting off, it’s the Blue Line, so it’s a long time," said Hardy. "I'm ready to go home."

But The Yellow Line is back up and running, with trains every eight minutes on weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. It provides a direct line to Reagan National Airport.

"[I'm] excited because it's much quicker, it's easy, it's pretty much always on time, just a lot quicker than the Blue Line," said Hardy. "It gets you where you need to go faster."

This weekend, Metro revealed its newly completed work on the Yellow Line’s Potomac River tunnel and bridge, between the L’Enfant Plaza and Pentagon stations, taking 300 passengers on a tour. It’s been a $384 million project.

"If we were to do this work on non-revenue and weekends, it would’ve taken much longer than eight months," said Metro senior manager Tatiana Kotirkova. "It would’ve taken over three years to do it."

Metro ridership remains at about half of what it was pre-pandemic, in 2019.

For now, trains will run every 12 minutes on the weekends but in June, Metro says service will improve to every eight minutes seven days a week.