Metro to shut down as normal despite Nationals playoff game

WASHINGTON - Heads up to Nationals fans planning to ride the Metro to Thursday night's Game 5 of the National League Division Series - the game will most likely not be over by the time Metro service is set to end.

The Nationals playoff game against the Dodgers is scheduled to start at 8 p.m. and Metro is scheduled to end service at midnight.

Metro released the following statement saying:

"There has been no change to the moratorium on late/early closings that the GM announced in May. Unfortunately that has meant saying no to worthy organizations including Susan G. Koman Race for the Cure, the Marine Corps Marathon and others. A post-season Nats game is a much smaller scale event in terms of ridership. I'm not sure how one says no to tens of thousands of Susan G. Koman participants and Marines but yes to baseball fans - to say nothing of regular riders, who have not gotten any "exceptions" from the hardships of SafeTrack.

"Both the FTA and the NTSB have said Metro needs more downtime to do maintenance, and a peer review by other transit agencies came to the same conclusion. In 1991, when the system was physically 25% smaller with 12 fewer stations running shorter, less frequent trains (and was 18 years younger), the system had 33 percent more downtime than it did at the start of this year."

With the system closing at midnight, fans at Thursday's game face the possibility of having to leave early if they want to ride Metro home.

Local leaders, including D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, have made it known they would like Metro to make an exception for Nationals' fans. But with Metro holding firm, Bowser does not have much of a solution for Thursday.

"Nats fans are amazingly persistent and creative, and we know they are going to plan ahead and they are going to get to the game, they are going to cheer on our big win and then we are going to get home," said Mayor Bowser. "I'll repeat what I said earlier -- we need a plan so that we are not trying to figure it out day-to-day."