Overheard on the Blue Line...

I was returning from a Kentucky Derby party a couple weekends ago and am sure I heard the driver announce the following over the PA system:

"This is a Blue Line train to HUNTINGTON."

Hmmmm.... since the Blue Line doesn't GO to Huntington, I can only presume the driver meant to say "Franconia-Springfield" and was confused. OR has Metro begun an experiment, splitting the Blue line such that trains terminate in both places now?

Has anyone heard something similar?

UPDATE: Matt Johnson (of Greater Greater Washington and Track Twenty-Nine fame) provided the answer in reponse to my comment at the bottom of this post. Due to scheduled track work that weekend, all Blue and Yellow Line trains terminated at Huntington. Metro operated a shuttle train from King Street to Franconia-Springfield for those persons traveling to the Van Dorn Street or Franconia-Springfield stations. Thanks, Matt!

More on Proposed Metro Expansion and Re-Alignments

If you haven't guessed by now, the purpose of this blog is as much to amuse myself and organize my thoughts as it is to entertain and enlighten my readers (both of them). Thank you for indulging my narcissism, and thanks to Blogger for providing this medium for my amusement.

Metro is considering a number of proposals for the future, a few of which include:

1) Building the new Silver and Purple Lines,

2) Running some Blue Line trains across the Potomac on the Yellow Line bridge to reduce congestion in Rosslyn, and

3) Digging a new tunnel for the Blue Line across the Potomac from Rosslyn and under downtown via M Street, Mass. Ave., and H Street NE.

As posted a couple days ago, Metro's current plans for items 1 and 3 would result in something that looks much like the image above. Click on it to see GGW's post detailing these plans.

On item 2 above, one proposal for the Blue trains re-routed across the Yellow Line bridge is to designate those trains as a whole new line with their own new color. As GGW points out, this is unnecessary. The re-routed trains could simply be referred as Yellow Line trains terminating at Franconia-Springfield instead of Huntington. Here is a great old Metro map showing that the Yellow Line was originally planned to terminate at Franconia, and the Blue in Huntington. The two were switched due to a shortage of train cars - presumably, fewer cars are needed in the current alignment than the original proposal. As GGW recommends, I would support simply splitting the Yellow Line trains so that all trains crossing the Yellow Line bridge would be Yellow trains, regardless whether they terminate at Franconia or Huntington.

Finally, here is a post and pic of the alternative floated by Metro to rename the re-routed Blue trains as a new "Brown Line" terminating at Franconia/Springfield and Greenbelt.