Washington Nationals playoff baseball is returning this October, and many fans are going to make their way to Nats Park at the Navy Yard via the DC Metro. However, if the Metro has its way, nobody will be making their way home via the Metro’s Green Line, because the Metro still plans to close at its normal time despite the influx of people leaving the game late at night. Now, Nats ace Max Scherzer has decided to step in and give his say.
“God, I would hope to believe that playoff games here in D.C. would mean more than shutting down the lines for a couple hours,” he told Grant Paulsen and Danny Rouhier on 106.7 The Fan. “I mean, isn’t it a supply and demand issue? We have a supply of people that demand to use the line to go to the park. Why wouldn’t you want to meet that?”
The Metro is currently undergoing SafeTrack maintenance, which isn’t a bad thing considering more than a few Metro trains tend to catch fire, but that maintenance would temporarily suspend late closings and early openings for the service, which is a big problem in case Nats playoff games go beyond nine innings.
Metro Board Chairman Jack Evans said this at a breakfast this week: “It’s going to look foolish if 15,000 people have to get up and leave the game. … It’s just an embarrassment that as the nation’s capital, one of the major cities in the world, our subway system closes. It’s crazy.”
The only exception Metro GM Paul Wiedefeld hasn’t opposed for special events is the upcoming Presidential Inauguration. Otherwise, he’s sticking to his guns. Nothing for football, the Marine Corps Marathon, no exceptions, no way. Metro argues that one exception would lead to another, thereby cutting down on needed maintenance time on the system.
Scherzer is not a fan of this argument.
“That explanation is really weak in my opinion,” Scherzer said on Friday. “There could be more to this story, and I could be missing it, but if that’s the only reason — if slippery slope is the reason — wow. I don’t understand that.”
The last northbound train (heading towards downtown DC and Prince George’s County in Maryland) leaves the Navy Yard at 11:20. It’s highly likely that Nats playoff games will not be over by then, leaving thousands of people stranded with no public transport options to get home.
https://twitter.com/dwayne_stewart/status/781935492866637826
The DC Metro is normally incredibly stupid, inefficient and unreliable, but this insistence on something incredibly stupid, headstrong and inconvenient for the people it needs to serve takes the cake.
And just in case you thought Scherzer wasn’t done speaking his mind on the situation…
From what it sounds like, fans need a Midnight Train… A Midnight Train going anywhere. https://t.co/7rdeO0rcrs #DontStopBelieving
— Max Scherzer (@Max_Scherzer) September 30, 2016
